


Sentiment Stretched Over Sediment and Soil

by ladylikepunk



Series: In a soundtrack of history, breathing will be all the dust that I need [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Clint Needs a Hug, Coulson Lives, Developing Friendships, F/F, F/M, Family, Gen, Homophobic Language, M/M, Pepper and Natasha are BFFs in badassery, Recovery, Steve has some issues, Steve is not a dick on purpose, Thor you are hopeless, Tony is definitely a dick on purpose, do not fuck with Maria, domestic-ish, perhaps living together was not a good idea, steve is a dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:56:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 20,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylikepunk/pseuds/ladylikepunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following on from <cite> I wished on shooting stars last night </cite>. In which Phil starts his recovery, Clint starts his own process of dealing with his own shit, and Tony Stark is an unmitigated arsehole, with Cap as his unknowing partner-in-being-a-dickhead.</p>
<p>Natasha and Maria are not impressed. Nor is Pepper. Or Bruce. In fact, nobody is impressed at all, and several people are actually quite angry and upset. </p>
<p>Thor is mostly confused, but he has Sarah to explain things to him. Eight year olds understand Thor. </p>
<p>Some of the tags are there for later chapters. Rating because there will be porn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clint has gotten used to the hospital floor of Stark Towers; now that Phil is no longer hooked to machines day in and day out, it’s pretty comfortable – the room is a little too white to be anything other than a hospital room, it smells a little too much of disinfectant and stark cleanliness, and Phil’s bed is still a hospital bed, but there is also a decent-sized sofa and a tv in the room, and the physical therapy suite is the best he’s ever seen. He’d prefer it if they could go home, but here is where Phil is, and so here is where he’ll stay, even if here smells too clean, is just that little bit too well-lit, and the doctors are never far away.

 

Phil is tired easily; he naps in the afternoons after his daily PT – Clint likes to sit with him, because he hates the idea of Phil being alone, of waking alone – and he falls asleep when they watch TV in the evenings, his head on Clint’s shoulder, wrapped in the blanket Clint asked Nat to bring from their flat, the one with uneven grey and purple stripes that he adores even though it’s more than a little ugly. Clint would have gone to the flat himself, but that would have meant leaving Phil’s side for several hours in the first days after he woke up, and so he gave Nat and Maria a list, mostly things like pyjamas and books, because he and Phil both hate hospital gowns (for Clint, it’s the smell of unfamiliar laundry detergent; for Phil, they’re undignified), and he’d always been saying he’d read more, and this was as good a time as any to start. He asked for the New York Times to be delivered every day – Phil treated himself to a newspaper whenever they had down time, at home or on an op, he liked the feel of a paper, rather than just reading it online, and they’d developed the habit of reading it together; they played _rock, paper, scissors_ to see who got which section first, Phil reading interesting bits aloud, Clint swearing at op ed pieces he disagreed with. The fashion sections were always saved for Natasha. The crossword was a joint effort, done in pencil, over several hours – usually while Clint watched cartoons or Phil prepared one of his magnificent Sunday roasts, and occasionally in bed, after slow-paced we-have-nowhere-to-be sex.

 

Now, the crossword is done around physical therapy and naps, sometimes over lunch, when Nat comes in and sprawls over the end of the bed, and makes up outrageous answers (it turned out _Stark_ was not another word for immature, nor was _fucknugget_ ever the answer to the anagrams, but this did not put her off). Maria comes with her at least once a week, and tells them all of the gossip from SHIELD. There was a card, and flowers. Sitwell sent a box of chocolates, good ones, from some fancy-ass place in Belgium, and came over once, looking uncomfortable until he was told Stark was in Washington, when he flopped into a chair and groaned and started telling his outrageous stories. Mostly, however, it was just Clint and Phil, with the occasional doctor popping in and out.

 

Clint liked it – it reminded him, in a way, of the first tentative days of their relationship. Not the awkward tiptoeing around each other when Clint was hopelessly gone and Coulson kept trying to tell him it was mutual without ever just _saying_ it – or what Nat now referred to as Coulson’s mating dance – but the days spent wrapped in each other, kissing for hours on the sofa and touching all the places they had longed to touch. Phil had been told to take it slow – and being Phil, he had asked whether or not he could go back to work, drink coffee, and have sex (no, decaf, not yet) – and so they did, kissing and touching and lying together on the sofa or the hospital bed, Clint trying not to touch Phil’s newest scar too much, only taking his cock in his mouth when Phil, looking mutinous, carried through with his declared intent to take care of things himself (not that Clint had any objections to watching his lover pleasure himself, but the sight of it had been too much). Thankfully, Phil’s increased heart-rate doesn’t bring the doctors running.

 

Fury visits once, and Clint and Natasha glare at him, but Phil tells them all, calmly, that he understands and supports Director Fury’s initial decision to announce his death, but that he also understands their anger. He is angry that Fury took so long to tell them otherwise, and he tells Fury this, calmly, without hyperbole, but in the tone of voice he uses on the most foolhardy of junior agents, and Clint sees Fury flinch from Phil’s anger and disappointment.

 

Clint and Natasha talk over their loyalty to SHIELD, one quiet evening once Phil has fallen asleep; they feel betrayed, but the betrayal is by Fury, not SHIELD itself (which is admittedly a fine distinction, but a distinction nonetheless), and so they agree they will remain at SHIELD, with their lovers and their friends, but that they will also be with The Avengers, because Clint wants to do more than go back to the way things were, and Natasha is still concerned over the red in her ledger, as she puts it. Whatever happens, they will be together; Clint suspects that Nat’s relationship with Maria has affected her decision in a way it wouldn’t have done before, but she is being coy – which tells him that she is still working things out herself, but will come to him in time. Sitwell emails Clint to say he will be officially taking over Phil’s duties as The Avengers’ liaison, until Agent Coulson is well enough to resume his duties. Natasha remarks that Maria and Sally Novak sent Jasper a sympathy card.

 

The other Avengers visit. Banner is the first, joining Phil’s medical team quietly, hovering in the background and more than a little unsure of his welcome until Phil starts asking him questions directly. Natasha likes Banner, has done since the day he punched Fury, Clint sees that – she’s a little nervous of Hulk still, but she smiles at Banner when he comes in, and stops watching him quite so carefully (Natasha still watches everybody, because she’s Natasha Romanov, super spy, but he knows the difference between her watching from habit and her watching because she thinks there’s something to be watched _for_ ). Banner is quiet, but confident in his knowledge, and he is happy to explain to Clint about medical issues, and he does so without making Clint feel patronised. Clint suspects that it is Banner who brings Cap in to help with Phil’s PT.

 

Cap is a bundle of confusion and honest-to-goodness kindness; he wants to help, wants to be useful and friendly and needed, but he doesn’t know how, and Clint sees that his pop-culture references confuse him, so he tones it down – Clint knows he tends to run his mouth a bit, so he tends to shut up around people until he knows how they’ll react. Phil is delighted by Cap’s presence – Clint calls him a massive fanboy, and rolls his eyes at Phil’s new-found ability to say the most idiotic things when faced with his idol (he howled with laughter when Phil confessed to his “I watched you when you were sleeping” moment, and has not stopped making comments about it since), and once the pair of them get over their initial mutual embarrassment (because Steve isn’t very good at being an idol), they find they get on well – they share a taste for classical music and baseball, while Clint likes motorcycles and introduces Cap to classic cartoons; none of them discuss how Cap is tiptoeing around the idea of two men having a relationship so openly, deciding that it’s probably one of those things Cap is finding really weird about waking up in the future. Nat complained that Cap wouldn’t fight her, and Clint suspects that she is still figuring Cap out, because she is always there when he turns up; he starts telling her everything that Cap has said and done when he is helping or just hanging out, and she grins sharply at him and refuses to tell him what she’s up to.

 

Thor is nice enough, but _loud_ , and he wakes Phil up a lot, calling him _Son of Coul_ and smacking him on the shoulder until Natasha very sweetly tells him she will shove his hammer up his cute Asgardian arse and punt him through the nearest window. Clint laughs at Thor’s expression of horror – and Phil’s _I am totally not trying not to laugh_ poker face – and Thor stops with the friendly smacking and contents himself with bringing Phil enough food to feed a small army and reciting epic poetry about sex and fighting. He also enjoys cartoons, and Clint convinces him that _yabba-dabba-doo_ is in fact a mighty war cry. Phil pretends that his is not amused. Thankfully, Thor spends a great deal of time in New Mexico, and his visits come only once a week.

 

Pepper Potts’ visits are irregular, but Phil is always pleased to see her; they have been friends since Stark started playing with flying armour. They are both efficiency demons, as far as Clint is concerned, and he can’t wait to see what they do once Phil is back to work and they can officially join forces, rather than bitching to each other over email and pretending to be business acquaintances. Pepper – she becomes Pepper quickly, now she is Clint’s friend as well – has won over Natasha, and Maria, with her quick humour and core of steel; she laughs at Clint’s sarcasm, and sneaks Phil a StarkTech tablet with all the bells and whistles so he can start reading all the files Maria has conveniently forgotten to lock him out of. This improves Phil’s humour no end – despite Clint’s best efforts, he is bored of bed-rest and PT and TV, and Banner calmly tells the medical team that having a little work is helping Phil’s recovery.

 

Phil started to suggest that Clint and Natasha started considering going back to SHIELD, started reminding people they were still Specialist Agents and not just Avengers. Natasha agreed – she was apparently concerned people would stop being scared of her – but Clint needed a little more convincing; he didn’t want to leave Phil, even though he knew Phil was recovering, and that Phil didn’t _need_ Clint by his side every minute of the day.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve was just about used to the twenty-first century, in that he was pretty certain that SHIELD didn’t have a time machine, this wasn’t a dream, and he might as well just get on with it. He was good at getting on with it. He’d retreated to Stark’s tower quickly enough, because just about everything gave him the willies, however – it turned out there was a huge difference between being used to it being the twenty-first century now, and actually _dealing_ with the twenty-first century.

 

Tony Stark reminded him of Howard, of Peggy, of things that were gone, and he seemed hell-bent on winding Steve up as far as possible. Steve would have been a lot happier living in Stark’s tower if it hadn’t actually contained Tony Stark.

 

Doctor Banner – Steve was just about used to calling him Bruce – was nice, if continuously easily distracted. He was apparently drawn to Stark like the man was magnetic – even though Stark seemed as intent on getting under Bruce’s skin as he was on winding Steve up –and so Steve didn’t see much of him. They ate lunch together a few times, on days when Steve wasn’t helping with the clean-up, and Bruce was sympathetic, a good listener, and didn’t make fun of Steve. He liked Bruce.

 

Specialist Romanov scared the hell out of him, and he didn’t know Specialist Barton at all – they’d been in the tower when he arrived, but kept to themselves. Then she disappeared off on a mission for SHIELD, asking him to keep an eye on Specialist Barton, and Steve discovered that he was essentially comatose with what he thought was guilt (Steve couldn’t get the man to say anything about the attack), and Steve tried really hard not to panic, because it was just too close to home, so when Thor returned hours before The Black Widow had called and demanded they come get her and fly to SHIELD’s helicarrier (and he wasn’t even _thinking_ about dealing with that), Steve was actually glad, because he could do _doing_.

 

Of course, it turned out that Director Fury had been manipulating their emotions, concealing Agent Coulson’s not-death, and was in a power play with this group who commanded a missile strike on Manhattan while maintaining they strove towards “world peace”, and Steve, well, he just wanted to quit, because the twenty-first century was apparently when everything had gone down the rabbit hole.

 

That all said, he’d actually been glad to get back to his far-too-big flat in Stark’s far-too-big tower, because it’s easy to shut everything out there; it’s not crawling with agents, and he can’t hear the hum of the engines on the helicarrier, and he can sit and drink coffee with Bruce, or draw, or read, or do nothing, without feeling that he’s somehow taking up space. He settles into a routine – he goes for a run early in the morning, testing the waters of this new New York in his own time. Then he eats a sensible cooked breakfast, which he cooks himself, using fresh ingredients, enjoying the ease with which he can get hold of food now. When he’s not out with a clean-up crew, he spends some time reading – he’s got the basics of the last seventy-five years down, and now he’s looking at the details that interest him – usually with the help of JARVIS and the internet. He is learning to swim, or at least practicing; he could flail about well enough to keep his head above water when he left for Europe, but he wants to improve. He thinks swimming in a safe place will help with the nightmares, and Bruce is helping; Bruce is also teaching him yoga. They eat lunch together on those days, and Bruce tries to explain his current experiments, and Steve listens. After a respectable amount of time – during which he draws, or reads the newspaper sites, he spars with Thor for several hours, if Thor’s not in New Mexico. Thor is loud, cheerfully confused by Midgardian everything, and immensely likeable. They eat dinner together, in the communal kitchen on the seventy-fourth floor, usually with Bruce, and sometimes they are joined by Specialist Romanov, or Pepper Potts, or Tony Stark. Specialist Romanov is still terrifying. Specialist Barton spends most of his time on the hospital floor, with Agent Coulson. Stark rarely emerges from his workshop, and when he does, he’s usually off on StarkIndustries business. Steve wonders if Stark is avoiding them, but he is wary of forcing his presence on the man.

 

After a few weeks, a few changes are made. He eats all his meals in the communal kitchen, sharing an occasional breakfast with Clint – who he finds is easy-going and makes delicious pancakes – and lunch with Bruce and sometimes Natasha, who is still terrifying on a first-name basis, and often with Pepper as well. Sometimes Natasha watches him spar with Thor. Steve will not spar with her, because he is still shy of getting violent with women, even women he’s fought alongside, and besides, he’s heard her threatening Stark with a pair of chopsticks, and, as Pepper put it, _hell no_. Thor has no such issues, and Steve finds watching them train together fascinating – Thor is all muscle and energy and blunt force, while Natasha is quick and smart and beats Thor frequently.

 

Steve visits Agent Coulson occasionally, usually to help out with his physical therapy, at Bruce’s encouragement, or when Thor’s exuberance gets too much. Clint is usually there, sitting in a chair beside Agent Coulson’s bed while he naps, or playing checkers or sharing the newspaper and arguing over the crossword; Steve finds their relationship peculiar – he understands, thanks to the revelations on board the helicarrier, that they are a couple, but he struggles to connect this with what he’s previously known about gay relationships, which was a confused mess of it being illegal and wrong, that men in the army sometimes did things with other men that nobody would speak of, and that he thinks everyone deserves someone to love. Both Agent Coulson and Clint appear to understand this, but he gets the impression that there is something about his presence that makes them – not uncomfortable, but perhaps slightly restrained.

 

Steve finds Coulson’s habit of referring to his partner as _Specialist Barton_ , even in the context of their relationship, to be a little disconcerting. Clint calls Coulson _sir_ a lot too. This leads Steve to spend an enlightening few hours on the internet, and he is rather awkward around them for the next few days. This does not help, especially because Stark walks in as he is trying to shut down his computer and sees _everything_.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint has started having breakfast with Cap during Phil’s morning check-up, because Phil kept trying to make him eat granola with goddamn raisins in it, and Natasha told him that his lack of interaction with the others was starting to get a little annoying. Phil grinned, and told him to fuck off and get acquainted with the vents, and his teammates. Clint was a little more enthusiastic about the vents – because he was like that. JARVIS seemed amused by it, and sent Clint several sets of schematics.

 

Stark was less amused, because apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that the vents into his workshop were perfectly sensible points of access to someone who didn’t really mind rappelling down a forty-foot shaft barely wider than his shoulders. Clint did not make his first foray into Stark’s workshop until the man himself was out, however – and when Stark returned from wherever he’d been, Clint had already made friends with Dummy (who had attacked him with the fire extinguisher); he was teaching Dummy to high-five and sitting on top of one of the Iron Man suit prototypes.

 

“How the fuck did you get in here?” Stark demanded. “JARVIS, how the fuck did he get in here? The fuck are you doing, Barton, get away from my bot.”

 

“Vents,” Clint grinned. “Your bot sprayed me with foam.”

 

“He does that. Fuck, Dummy. No, no high fives. This is not going to be a thing. You’re an arm.”

 

“Arms high five,” Clint pointed out, dropping down from his perch. “Dummy?”

 

“His name.”

 

Dummy high-fived Stark in the face, and Clint laughed as he went sprawling, but went to help him up.

 

“I should have left you in Malibu,” Stark groused, refusing Clint’s help. “No, Dummy, not the fire extinguisher. Go do something. Don’t you have something to do?” He turned to his worktable, and fiddled with a holographic display of the tower.

 

“Nice to meet you, Dummy,” Clint patted the arm, and high-fived Dummy carefully. Dummy rolled away, apparently content.

 

“You came through the vents?” Stark refocused on Clint, fingers still moving over the holographic interface.

 

Clint shrugged. “Wanted to see where they went.”

 

“They went here. You are not supposed to be in here. This is my fucking workshop.”

 

“You might want to put a sign up,” Natasha announced from the doorway. “No girls, no archers, that sort of thing.”

 

“How the fuck?”

 

“Specialist Romanov was looking for Specialist Barton,” JARVIS announced, sounding a little prim. “Also, she asked nicely.”

 

“Threaten to take a knife to your systems?” Stark addressed his AI.

 

“No, Specialist Romanov said _please_ ,” JARVIS retorted. Natasha looked smug.

 

Tony suspected her of trying to win his systems over, and he glared at her.

 

“Come on, Barton. We’re off to see the wizard.”

 

“The wonderful one-eyed wizard of lying?”

 

“Indeed. Come.”

 

Clint shrugged, and made for the exit.

 

“Not you, Stark,” Natasha said, holding her hand out in front of Stark’s face.

 

“But –“

 

“This is not about you, Stark. I’m sure you have … things to do. I’m sure Pepper could find you something, if you are truly bored.”

 

“But –“

 

“JARVIS, please put a call through to Ms Potts. Mr Stark is available for the meeting with legal, should she still wish him to attend.”

 

“Didn’t I fire you?”

 

“I quit,” Natasha smiled, and stalked out. Clint shrugged at Stark, and followed, because Natasha was giving off a particularly high level of do-not-go-there attitude, and if they were leaving the tower, she was probably carrying more knives than he cared to know about. He heard Stark instructing JARVIS to keep them both out as the door hissed shut behind them, and winced at his angry tone. Perhaps pissing off their host wasn’t the best idea.


	4. Chapter 4

Natasha helped herself to one of Stark’s sports cars, the same blood red as her hair, and drove like a bat out of hell (which is to say, like she normally did, because Natasha only drove at two speeds: stationary and oh-shit-we’re-all-going-to-die). Clint called Phil, who assured him that he was quite fine (Clint tried to believe him), and was going over his PT with Doctor Banner, and would see him for dinner; he sounded cheerful, and Natasha rolled her eyes and told him that he would benefit from a little time outside the tower. Clint was pretty certain she was right, but he did not really want to be going anywhere without Phil, just in case. Of stuff. He wasn’t sure what stuff. But stuff, like dying or heart attacks or alien gods taking over his brain. Stuff.

 

The parking garage under SHIELD HQ was a peculiar mix of armoured hummers and the nondescript sedans that Clint had long ago dubbed Suitmobiles, with a few other cars mixed in, but there was enough space for Stark’s car, even with Natasha’s haphazard approach to parking (why use one space when you can use three?). They took the stairs, instead of the elevator, which always took forever to come and invariably contained a member of SHIELD’s janitorial staff, all of whom Clint was convinced had been rejected from HYDRA for excessive creepiness.

 

“Good afternoon Specialist Romanov, Specialist Barton,” the receptionist, a steel-haired woman called Kathy, smiled at them. She looked like somebody’s grandmother, complete with twinset and pearls, and was rumoured to have once stabbed a man with one of her hairpins because he’d been impatient with the security checks. “Your ID please?”

 

“Hi Kathy,” Clint grinned, and shoved his hand into the blood scanner, ignoring the prick of needles as he stared into the retinal scanner. “How you doing?”

 

“Probies,” Kathy replied darkly. “You’ve been missing all the fun.”

 

“They are always the same,” Natasha said, repeating Clint’s movements with another scanner. “How many?”

 

“Three today,” Kathy nodded them through the gates. “But I had a head start.”

 

“I’ll bring you coffee if Nat doesn’t beat you in an hour,” Clint promised.

 

“Director Fury is expecting you,” Kathy told them. “Go straight up.”

 

Maria was not in her usual place overseeing the main floor – she was on the helicarrier – but the room was as busy as ever. Clint grinned at a few familiar faces, and tried not to look like he noticed the number of people who pointedly ignored him, glared suspiciously at him, or stared at him. He tried not to look at the empty desks in the cube farm either, and followed Natasha, because everyone got out of her way.  Agent Jones waved to Clint – she’d grown her hair out a little, forming a neat afro, and the bruise around her left eye was unnervingly familiar-looking - and Agent Hutton lifted his coffee cup in salute, his sleeves rolled up to reveal the join of his prosthetic hand. Clint threw him a grin. At least some people were ok with him being able to walk around.

 

Fury’s secretary, the diminutive Sanjay, waved them straight through, barely looking up from his computer, nodding into his headset. Fury’s office was large, the man himself hulking behind an enormous steel desk, lit from behind despite the sun streaming in through the windows. He’d replaced the carpet again, and Clint was not pleased to see several new bullet-holes decorating the floor next to a filing cabinet.

 

“You’re on time,” Fury observed. “Please leave the paperwork to deal with the speeding tickets with Sanjay.”

 

Natasha nodded once.

 

“AD Hill tells me Agent Coulson is nearly ready to resume at least a few of his duties.”

 

“A few, sir,” Clint replied, because the moment seemed to call for one of them to say something. “He’s doing well.”

 

“I’ll send Sitwell over, and assign Coulson an assistant. Someone to do the filing.”

 

“Sir?”

 

“A junior agent. We’ve increased our intake, some of the probies are being given actual duties. We lost a lot of people.”

 

Clint tried not to wince. Fury steamed on regardless.

 

“You two will divide your time between The Avengers Initiative and your responsibilities here. I expect you to be available to continue with ops as needed, the end of the world excepting.”

 

“Sir.”

 

“Problem, Agent Barton?”

 

“No sir.”

 

“Good. The shrinks look forward to clearing you for duty, and you _will_ be going through a thorough check. Masters has several files for you, Agent Romanov. Get the fuck out.”

 

Clint grins at Natasha as Fury’s door closes behind them. Her quirked eyebrow tells him he's not fooling her. 


	5. Chapter 5

When Tony Stark had suggested gathering all the Avengers into one place, he hadn’t really thought about what it would mean, it had just been a thing he’d said, because it seemed like a good idea, but just an idea, one of many he had that might fall into the category of “bad ideas”, but might not. It had been Pepper who had suggested turning one floor into a communal area – and another into several meeting rooms and offices – and Pepper who had made the actual arrangements, organised the contractors, did the decorating and the organising and made the arrangements and stocked the fridge in every room. Or Pepper had found someone to make the arrangements. Tony didn’t particularly care – he came up with the ideas, and other people did the work, which left him to go back to making things that actually mattered, rather than worrying about budgets or soft furnishings and details. He suspected that Pepper had had the plans for this in place since she first heard about the Avengers Initiative (and yeah, telling her had been a mistake, Pepper worried a lot, but she liked the idea of him having other people to watch his back).

 

Tony also hadn’t realised how little _stuff_ they all had. Tony had a lot of stuff – and admittedly a lot of room for that stuff – but Bruce had turned up with a single duffle bag, which wasn’t even full. Cap hadn’t been much better, but at least he’d needed to put that ancient motorcycle somewhere. Natalie – Natasha, damnit – had brought a half-wrecked and totally stolen SHIELD jet (ok, that was nice, because he could play with that), a nearly-comatose archer, and a terrifyingly large collection of weapons, but appeared to only have a single change of clothes, which he suspected she’d stolen from somewhere. And yeah, Pepper had helped with that, but Tony was pretty convinced that most people didn’t own more knives than underpants. They had so little stuff they tended to rattle around, echoing in hallways and borrowing things he’d much rather they wouldn’t borrow, and if they didn’t ask, wasn’t it stealing, even if they did put it back? Tony didn’t want them to touch his stuff.

 

Thor turned up on the roof at three in the morning after a couple of weeks carrying a bag of clothes, none of which were even slightly approaching appropriate, his hammer, and a barrel of booze, and Pepper gleefully welcomed him in and gave him another set of rooms, and bought him clothes and food and treated him like an overgrown Labrador. Tony wondered if Thor would sit if Pepper told him to. A few days after that – and the installation of Agent in the medical floors, and the revelations that Agent was not only not dead, he was shacked up with the now-not-comatose archer, and that was weird as all fuck, because the whole not-dying thing pretty much put a winning score in the “Agent is a robot” box, but fucking _Hawkeye_ was definitely not in-line with the robot thing, unless there was something particularly kinky there – Tony noticed that everyone had started to gravitate towards the communal floors, instead of ignoring each other and hiding until Pepper ordered takeout and den-mothered them into one room, where they didn’t make eye contact and watched films in silence. Well, he was going to say noticed. He just _happened_ to be monitoring the surveillance feeds while he was in his workshop. Tony didn’t trust people in his tower outside of the public and employee areas. He’d never intended to have anyone in there at all, except Pepper and Happy and occasionally Rhodey.

 

Natalie-Natasha and Pepper drank coffee together when Pep was in town, and Tony was pretty certain that little partnership was nothing but trouble for him; they had abandoned the awkwardness that had marked their first relationship, and – and Tony _had_ noticed, thank you, he wasn’t completely oblivious – Pepper had adapted to Natalie-Natasha’s terrifying actual personality with relative ease. They seemed to be having girl time, with shoe shopping and spa days and giggling (on Pepper’s side; Natalie-Natasha rarely cracked more than a slight smile). Bruce and Cap shared lunch, which answered the question of where he disappeared off to whenever Tony wanted him for something, which was invariably when Bruce was not cluttering up Tony’s workshop, and he didn’t mind the cluttering bit so much, Bruce was cool. Legolas lurked a lot, he was always hiding in corners and creeping about whenever he wasn’t glued to Agent’s side, and that was weird. Tony hadn’t been impressed when he’d popped up in his workshop, and he’d had to start monitoring the vents too. Legolas spent a lot of his time with Agent, or with Natalie-Natasha, because yeah, they were weird together, there was definitely history there, which pretty much cemented Tony’s working theory that Legolas was batshit insane, because while Natalie-Natasha was hot, and Natalie would have been a fun-if-bossy girlfriend, _Natasha_ was downright terrifying in a totally-appropriate-code-name way. Tony had watched them training together – through the security feed again – and JARVIS had confirmed that they’d used live ammunition a couple of times and laughed while doing so.

 

This was all very weird, and not entirely unpleasant, but it was mostly unpleasant, and Tony did. Not. Like. It. At. All.


	6. Chapter 6

Tony retreated to his workshop, and Pepper yelled at him a bit, but she left him to it after a bit. Tony figured that Pepper thought he’d get over it quicker if she stopped actually trying to get him to socialise with the bunch of freaks upstairs. He also figured that Pepper was only trying to encourage him to play nicely because she thought he could do with _friends_ or something, and he didn’t. Tony didn’t do friends, he did acquaintances and business partners and people he smiled in front of cameras with, and he did not need to be friends with people to work with them. Not that he did much of that either, because apparently superheroing was only an occasional thing, and he liked engineering anyway, and that he did alone. Occasionally with Bruce, who was quite good with machines for a biologist. Or a physicist. Or whatever the fuck he was. Tony liked to fiddle with Bruce’s lab equipment to make it do what Bruce actually needed it to do, and this did not seem to irritate Bruce – although nothing really seemed to irritate Bruce, except for loud music and people who didn’t rinse their dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. And JARVIS just turned the music down and Tony never ate off plates in the kitchen anyway.

 

Tony was glad that, after his little vent-based invasion of privacy, Legolas didn’t put in an appearance in his workroom. He gathered from Bruce, who had taken over the _come and play with the nice crazy people_ thing from Pepper, that the archer was now dividing his time between Agent’s hospital room and SHIELD, and wasn’t that just peachy, but Tony was mostly pleased to not see him. Natalie-Natasha was around even less, but when she did, she mostly spent her time with Agent or Pepper, or freaking Cap out, and Tony almost found that funny. _Everything_ freaked the good captain out, from JARVIS suddenly joining in a conversation, to  the beep of the coffee pot (Tony had totally not turned the volume up on the beep in the middle of the night, nope), to the number of channels on the TV. Also, he kept calling Tony _Howard-sorry-Tony_ whenever he wasn’t paying attention to Tony, and that was less amusing than the faint look of panic he wore when faced with the list of available varieties of syrup in the fridge.

 

Tony noticed that Natalie-Natasha’s approach to clothing made Cap nervous; Natasha had a tendency to wander about in tiny shorts and vests, or occasionally leggings and a sports bra, and she draped herself over Legolas like a cat in a patch of sunshine. Tony was pretty certain that Cap had seen plenty of barely-dressed women on his USO tours, but Cap still blushed when Natasha bent forward to root through the fridge, or when she reached across him to the coffee pot, and sometimes Tony could swear she was doing it on purpose. Maybe. She didn’t actually spend enough time in the tower for him to really tell what she’s up to, and maybe she’s not up to anything, maybe she really does want to be here and not wherever she lived before, but she doesn’t make any changes to her suite (he checked) and doesn’t get any more stuff beyond a few bits of clothing and some teabags.

 

Tony isn’t sure what to do until he overhears Rogers talking to Bruce about Legolas and Agent. It starts off innocuous enough; Cap is talking about the sniper going back to work, about physical tests and SHIELD, and then about psychiatric testing, because apparently Legolas has to go through that too.

 

“Isn’t it a problem that he’s, uh, you know, uh…” Cap’s awkwardness was palpable even through the security feed.

 

“Homosexual?” Bruce asked, gently. Tony rolled his eyes at his I-am-listening-and-being-understanding-not-judgemental tone.

 

“Yes. That. Gay, isn’t it what it’s called?”

 

“Yes. And no, it doesn’t matter, not any more. SHIELD used to be part of the army, and it would have mattered then, perhaps.”

 

“I read about ‘don’t ask don’t tell’.”

 

“That’s been gotten rid of,” Bruce told him. “It isn’t supposed to matter now – who somebody sleeps with, that is.”

 

“So SHIELD don’t care?”

 

“I don’t know, Steve. Probably not, they’d have known Clint was Agent Coulson’s medical proxy. And it’s against the law to descriminate.”

 

“But people – the people they work with, do they care?”

 

“Some people do, some don’t. Not everyone thinks it’s ok, and I don’t know what their colleagues think, or if it matters. Does it matter to you?”

 

“Uh, I don’t know,” Cap replied, scrubbing at his hair. Tony grinned to himself. “It’s – it’s not what I’m used to. I’ve not really been thinking about it – about that sort of thing. For anyone, not just for me.  I mean – I’m not like that, but it wasn’t really something I’ve been thinking about since, uh, I woke up.”

 

Bruce nodded. “I know what you mean.”

 

Tony grinned to himself, and turned the volume down a little, letting the feed run in the background. It was good to know the good captain wasn’t as perfect as he looked. And maybe the cap could do with someone to help him get used to things.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for homophobic language, right at the end of the chapter.

Tony chose to corner Cap one afternoon, as Cap was coming in from a day with the clean-up crew, and was settling onto a stool in the kitchen with a tablet and a frankly enormous mug of coffee; he wandered nonchalantly into the kitchen – it was _his_ kitchen after all – and helped himself to the rest of the coffee in the filter. Then he refilled it, because he figured Cap was the kind of guy who frowned on people who never refilled the coffee maker or took the last biscuit without asking. Tony helped himself to cookies from the cupboard – he’d seen Thor stashing boxes of sugary items in there, decided it wouldn’t matter if he took a few, because nobody needed that much sugar. He offered the box to Cap.

 

“How’s the clean-up?” Tony asked, pulling out another stool.

 

“Ok,” Cap replied, eyeing him suspiciously. “Not so many volunteers as there were a few weeks ago, work slowing down a bit.”

 

“People tend not to be so good with the long-term stuff,” Tony replied, munching on another cookie. “Pepper’s been donating to relief funds for us.”

 

“You haven’t been out?”

 

“I’ve done appearances. Me actually getting out there? Not so helpful.”

 

“Have you tried?”

 

“Trust me on this, Cap. Nobody would get any work done, the press would be everywhere … it’d be a disaster. Unless you actually wanted to spend more time fending off reporters than digging rubble, or whatever it is you’re doing.”

 

Cap pulled a face.

 

“But, you know, I’ve been thinking – wanted to ask you, you’ve been doing all the actual work, you and Bruce, I thought I, by which I mean S.I., might do some sort of party thing for volunteers. Or a fundraising dinner. Something suitably star-spangled for you.”

 

“Don’t if you don’t want to.”

 

Tony grinned at Cap, because his awkwardness was adorable, really, he was so awkward without a script to read off. “I want to, Cap. It’s important. And you can put in an appearance, maybe the rest of us too, do a little of that positive media thing that SHIELD really haven’t grasped yet.”   

 

Cap nodded. Tony munched his way through another cookie. He should probably buy Thor another box at this rate.

 

“I could – Pepper, I mean Miss Potts helped me find the rebuilding organisation,” Cap said carefully, like he wasn’t quite sure if he should let Tony in, like he was worried Tony would charge in and fuck it up. “I don’t really know the proper organisers, I just know the rest of the crew I’m on, that’s how I wanted it.”

 

“I’ll talk to Pep, it’s cool, Cap,” Tony grinned. “JARVIS, could you email Pepper for me?”

 

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS responded, causing Cap to twitch slightly. Tony tried very hard not to laugh at him, so shoved another cookie into his mouth.

 

“Do you want to get involved in the planning?” Tony asked through a mouthful of cookie.

 

Cap blinked again, translating cookie-muffled Stark into English, and then nodded again. “That would be nice,” he said.

 

“Excellent,” Tony swallowed and grinned at him. “Come down to the lab when you’re ready, we’ll talk, maybe get pizza, Pepper will hate me if I don’t get involved, and hey, I like parties.”

 

Cap nodded, and Tony clapped him on the shoulder and left, abandoning the nearly-empty cookie box on the table, grinning to himself as he bounced back towards his lab.

 

Steve watched him go, because _that_ had been a little odd. He’d gotten used to the idea that Tony Stark wasn’t like his father, not really – that he didn’t crave an audience to every aspect of his life, that Tony was happy not to be a showman every waking moment, and he respected that, respected the man’s right to privacy and space and time not squashed in with a bunch of others all standing on each other’s toes. Steve could see how a man could prefer his quiet. He had also decided he didn’t particularly like Tony Stark, but that had almost been, well, pleasant. Friendly. Not a word he’d previously used to describe Stark, although he could see how others could – he’d seen Tony with Bruce, with Pepper, and he was friendly there, warm and welcoming. Just not so much with him, where Tony was basically smarm and sarcasm wrapped in a shiteating grin that he could only have learnt from his father; Steve had found that same grin charming in Howard, until Tony had turned it on him, and he understood then why so many people had disliked Howard Stark.

 

Steve wanted to like Tony, however – and not just for Howard’s sake – and so he did make his way down to Tony’s workshop a few days later, carrying a couple of boxes of pizza and a huge bottle of cola, following the sound of a thumping bass down a flight of steps and through a pair of sliding glass doors that admitted him without prompting. He got the vague impression from the complicated-looking keypad that most people were not let through quite so easily, and he was hopeful that this was a good sign.

 

“Cap! Steve!” Tony grinned at him, waving a wrench. “JARIVS, turn the music down please.”

 

The music subsided to a background level, and Steve thanked the AI, because he really didn’t like modern music (he wasn’t sure if what Tony listened to counted as modern, but it was modern to him).

 

“I brought pizza,” he said, hefting the boxes. “Is there somewhere I should put them?”

 

“Uh – that table. Lots of pizza there, you inviting others?”

 

“Um, no,” Steve looked embarrassed. “I, uh, I’ve been sparring with Natasha and Thor, and, um, well, I’m hungry.”

 

“Fair enough. Super-soldier metabolism and all that,” Tony wiped his hands on a rag held out to him by one of his robots. “How are our resident god and favourite rugmuncher?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking forever with this, I'm sorry. Next bit soon!

Natasha shut her locker with a firm shove, and flipped the lock shut with a swipe of her thumb, and headed out of the changing rooms in the general direction of the senior agent’s offices. She had an appointment with Sitwell, but plenty of time to get there, and so she strolled, seeing what she could see or overhear. Perhaps not her most attractive habit, but, well, it was good to know things, and SHIELD agents loved to gossip. Most of it was useless, but every now and again she came across something worth knowing – like Woo’s opinion of the latest batch of FBI transfer applicants (dismal) or Jones’ coffee preference (sweet, milky). And sometimes it was just fun – like hearing the rumour she’d started (that Clint had actually been in deep cover when Loki had taken him over) grow legs and start being whispered around. She was pretty certain that it had won over a few of the agents who persisted in throwing dirty looks at Clint whenever he showed his face, and well, it was nice to know she wasn’t going to have to kill _quite_ so many people if they didn’t get over themselves.

 

Sitwell’s office was near the IT offices, so she took the long way round, to see if the specialists there had managed to roust JARVIS from SHIELD’s systems (of course not) and if they’d made much progress in figuring out how to interface with what they suspected were biologically-based computer-sort-of-things from the Chitauri (no, but nobody had blown anything up in the last 72 hours, which was progress of a sort).

 

Sitwell looked tired, more than usual, and the remaining stubble on his usually-shiny scalp looked in need of another buzz. He eyed Natasha with his usual expression of mild concern, and gestured at one of the chairs in front of his desk.

 

“Good workout?” He asked, shuffling through a couple of files.

 

“Good enough,” she replied. “One of the new recruits – Patterson – shows promise in hand-to-hand. She didn’t freak out completely when I started mixing styles.”

 

“I’ll tell Woo. He’ll be relieved to find someone who isn’t a complete waste of space.”

 

“They’re baby agents. They’re _all_ wastes of space.”

 

“This lot seem particularly wasteful.”

 

Natasha cocked an eyebrow at him.

 

“Undoubtedly the publicity garnered by the Chitauri invasion has encouraged a higher than usual level of applicants from the alphabet agencies. I think they think SHIELD is going to be a grander sort of place now we’re playing with aliens and superheroes.”

 

Natasha smiled. “Poor babies.”

 

“We’ll winnow out the real idiots,” Sitwell replied. “Now, tell me how things are in Stark tower?”

 

“Banner and Stark work well together, as expected. Banner’s … sense helps balance out some of Stark’s utter lunacy, although that might change as he unwinds. He’ll probably end up doing something brilliant when he intended to do something stupid, and it will probably involve Stark and a kitchen appliance. He could be quite stable in the right environment, and he’s likeable. Even Barton likes him, and you know what he’s like. Banner and Stark have already made some promising breakthroughs in his work on gamma radiation and DNA, stuff that Stern left behind, things SHIELD has had for years and never been able to take forward.”

 

“But they aren’t sharing.”

 

“Give Banner time. He’s still getting used to the new, cuddly SHIELD.”

 

Sitwell snorted. “How long?”

 

“Don’t know yet. I think – maybe – within the year. It depends on how well Banner keeps a hold on the Hulk. The longer he goes without incident, the better he feels – and the potential in him having full control is huge, it tempts him. He’s not going anywhere at the moment.”

 

“And Captain Rogers?”

 

“He’s – he’s doing better. Stark again. They’ve become, well, if not friends precisely, then something close to it. Stark seems to have gotten over his hissy fit over his dad’s old friend reappearing and has given in to Roger’s charm.”

 

“You still don’t like him,” Sitwell observed, making notes.

 

“He’s too good.”

 

“He might just be that good.”

 

“ _Nobody_ is that good. I just haven’t found his dirty little secret yet.”

 

“And when you do?”

 

“I’ll decide whether or not it’s worth keeping secret.”

 

Sitwell’s answering grin was amused. “I always knew you were a nice girl, Agent Romanov. Let me know how it goes. I don’t want to be putting out too many fires.”

 

“I suspect there’s something else behind Stark’s sudden change of heart,” Natasha continued. “He sulked from the moment he realised that ‘ _hey, let’s all move into mine, we’ll call it Avengers Tower, we’ll get a wet bar_ ,’ actually meant sharing his ego’s space with other people; even Ms Potts had stopped trying to winkle him out of his man-cave for bonding and team cuddles.”

 

“Do you think it’s serious?”

 

“I think it is Stark being a man-child of his usual massive proportions. Whatever it is, he’s not building anything beyond his usual toys and improvements to the Iron Man suit, and there’s nothing on the systems – at least nothing I can find, and nothing JARVIS will share. So either JARVIS doesn’t think it’s important, or Stark is keeping secrets from everyone, and he cannot keep a secret.”

 

“Have you spoken to anyone else about this?”

 

Natasha levelled a cool gaze at Sitwell, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

 

“How’s Phil?” Sitwell changed the subject abruptly.

 

“Grouchy,” Natasha replied. “He’s not making the progress in PT he wants to be making – even if it’s the progress his doctors want him to be making. There’s also the little matter of him thinking that if he’s not there to personally terrify them, the probies will never learn to fear him properly, but Barton keeps trying to persuade him how much fun it’ll be to break them all in, at once, in seconds.”

 

“Remind me to start selling tickets to that show.”

 

“Cut me in.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Barton been going to therapy?”

 

“Amazingly, yes.”

 

“I haven’t had any complaints.”

 

“I think … I think he is getting something out of it, this time. Who is he seeing?”

 

“Robertson,” Sitwell replied, obviously deciding that either she knew already or would find out, and telling her would just be quicker.

 

“He’s good. He won’t take Barton’s shit.”

 

“Has he said anything?”

 

“He’ll tell me when he’s ready.”

 

“And you’ll tell me?”

 

“If I think you need to know. I’m not telling you what you don’t need to know about every little thing, Jasper, but I’m not going to tell you everything just because you’re my handler now. I didn’t tell Coulson everything.”

 

“I know, Natasha. I just – I want to know if there’s anything that needs dealing with before the psych report finds its way to my desk.”

 

Natasha’s gaze was surprisingly soft. “I will tell you, Jasper.” She smiled a little at him; Natasha genuinely liked Sitwell, liked his dry humour, his sense of honour and his warmth. She wasn’t going to tell him shit, not unless she really had to (and to be honest, by the time she really had to, he would already know, because there would probably be death and explosions and shouting), but she didn’t want to hold that over him. He didn’t need to worry.

 

“Anything else?”

 

“You do know I write you daily reports? That I send to you by email and on paper?”

 

“I like this whole face-to-face thing, Natasha. It reminds all of us we’re real people.”

 

“I have my doubts.”

 

“Barton doesn’t count as people.”

 

“I wasn’t talking about Barton.”

 

“Get out of my office, Romanov. I’ve got to shout at people before I pick Sarah up from school.”

 

“It’s Tuesday, Sitwell. Maria’s got Sarah.”

 

“Fuck. Tuesday?”

 

“Yes. It’s been Tuesday for approximately the last fifteen hours. In a little under nine hours, it will be _Wednesday_.”

 

“I hate you.”

 

“No you don’t. You love me and my unerring ability to keep track of what day it is.”

 

“Piss off, Romanov. Get out of my hair.”

 

“You don’t have any hair,” Natasha sauntered out.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for homophobic language, just once, towards the end.

Natasha quite liked this new Wednesday. Most of the trips away she’d been on had only been a few days long – milk runs really, until Clint was back properly, testing the water to see if she was still of use now she was an Avenger; as a result, she was at home more than usual. And this gave her the opportunity to spend more time with Maria outside of the confines of work, where both of them were uncomfortable being particularly affectionate – determined flirting, yes, but publicly demonstrating their feelings for each other was another matter.

 

They hadn’t really discussed the matter, but it had become routine for Natasha to spend a few evenings each week with Sarah as well as her mother; Maria’s daughter adored Phil (who attracted small children and animals, much to his confusion and everyone else’s amusement), and had petitioned loudly for visiting rights once she discovered he was allowed visitors in the tower. The spare room in Natasha’s tower flat wasn’t precisely declared to be Sarah’s, but it acquired items that marked it as belonging to a small girl – the bedcovers sported TV characters, and there was a small, but growing, collection of comics and books on the shelves.

 

Natasha found she didn’t really mind that. Sarah was just a smaller-than-usual roommate, with a predilection for cartoons and sugary cereal and an inability to pick up her towels in the bathroom, and while Clint wouldn’t have been impressed by being compared to an eight year old girl, even he would have admitted it to be a remarkably similar series of habits. At least Sarah didn’t leave arrowheads sitting about.

 

Maria had propelled a protesting Sarah out of Phil’s hospital room earlier, declaring in the voice she usually used on particularly stupid junior agents that it was time for homework to be done and Phil to be left in peace. Phil looked vaguely relieved; Clint was now sporting purple sparkly toenails and a glittery hairclip, and Natasha had taken photos and they had had a small fight, which Natasha had won (obviously). Natasha followed soon after, seeing that Phil was starting to push himself to be awake, which was making Clint fuss, and they were either gearing up for a minor spat, or sex – and neither of those really included her being present. Besides, Maria was cooking, and Natasha loved watching Maria cook – Maria in the kitchen was nowhere near as efficient as Assistant Director Hill at work was; she made a mess, she swore, she nibbled at vegetables and proffered spoons of too-hot liquid to taste, and she made heavenly creations where Natasha always made something burnt or flavourless or plain old wrong.

 

Natasha perched herself on the counter, and grabbed at Maria with her legs whenever she headed anywhere near her; Maria laughed, and allowed herself to be caught and pulled in to be kissed, twisting away because Natasha wasn’t actually trying to hold on to her. Their kisses were brief, tender but without intent, both aware of Sarah at the table in the other room, neither willing or particularly interested in going further at that moment. Natasha nipped at Maria’s lower lip, because she could, and Maria rapped her on the knee with the wooden spoon she’d retrieved from a drawer, frowning in mock reproof. Natasha grins at her, open and laughing and teasing, and Maria kisses her again, hard, with a touch of a promise, laughing as she does so.

 

“You’re distracting me,” Maria says, pulling away to shove the spoon into the Bolognese she’s making, then curse because she’d meant to put it in the pasta instead. She glared at Natasha, who is unrepentant, and goes to open a bottle of wine, because what the hell, if Stark’s going to put wine in her kitchen, Natasha will drink it. Everyone always assumes that Natasha only ever drinks vodka, and while she prefers good vodka to pretty much anything else, Stark buys nice wine, and she can appreciate that, especially when it goes with Maria’s cooking. Maria takes the bottle from her, and pours a generous measure into the Bolognese.

 

The three of them eat at the table, because Maria has Feelings About Dinner, especially when Sarah is around; the sort of Feelings that require the table to be set by said child, and table manners to be used, and the TV to be off. Natasha is ok with this, because she likes the formality of the meal, the pleasantries of dinner-table conversation, but more recently, the sense of family in sitting around her little table. She’d always liked the structure before, but previously, it had been something she’d associated with a mission, with work and people she disliked but pretended to feel something else for. She didn’t have the space in her little flat for a dining table anyway.

 

Partway through the meal, JARVIS interrupts to ask if Natasha and Maria would be happy to meet with Captain Rogers before they headed to bed. They agree. Sarah announces that JARVIS will hang with her while she reads, and Maria frowns.

 

“Assistant Director,” JARVIS says, apparently reading her expression from wherever his cameras are hidden, “I believe Thor is currently in the communal sitting room if you would prefer Ms Sarah to have company. Captain Rogers is in the kitchen.”

 

This seems to be acceptable to Maria, and Sarah grins, because Thor is _awesome_ fun, and will probably let her watch something unsuitable on TV because he has utterly no concept of age-appropriate. He seems to regard children – or perhaps it’s just Sarah – as small queens, and spoils them rotten; the last time he and Sarah were left unsupervised together, they had gotten hyped up on sugary foods and had an epic _Mario Kart_ battle that could be heard two floors away, followed by a pillow fight that had the towers cleaning bots in meltdown.

 

Natasha was genuinely surprised Maria agreed to let them spend any time together after that.

 

Cap was doing the dishes when they arrived – needlessly, as Stark had a particularly efficient dishwasher, but someone (Natasha blamed Bruce) had told Steve about water conservation, and he’d taken to doing the dishes by hand unless more than three people were eating. Natasha mentally marked this habit down in the “seriously, is he for real?” column.

 

Clint was perched at the breakfast bar, on one of the stools, wearing what Natasha knew were his pyjamas (ratty-looking Rangers t-shirt, previously belonging to Phil; even rattier purple tracksuit trousers she’d bought him with her first SHIELD paycheck, from a women’s clothes shop in some featureless mall in Ohio). He looked mildly grumpy, but that was just his face. Natasha perched on the countertop next to him and ruffled his hair. Maria folded her arms and gave Cap a look that Natasha translated as “ _I was having a perfectly good evening, please tell me you have a good reason for making me go anywhere near actual work_ ”.

 

“Coffee, AD Hill?” Steve asked, smiling.

 

“No thanks,” Maria didn’t bother smiling back. “What’s so important, Captain?”

 

Clint nudged Natasha. _You two had plans_ , he was saying, louder than words. She rolled her eyes at him.

 

“Uh, well, uh, I wanted to run something by you and Agent Romanov and Agent Barton. It’s something I’ve been talking about with Tony, and, uh, I wanted SHIELD to approve it and maybe get involved too, but I don’t know what the rules are, or if SHIELD had anything planned.”

 

“Ok,” Maria said slowly. “Tell me.”

 

Natasha wondered if there was ever going to be any point at which she would ever hear that Steve Rogers and Tony Stark had been planning something, and decide it was probably a good idea. She decided she’d probably voluntarily surrender herself to the psych department first. She blinked at Cap, slowly, and raised an eyebrow.

 

Cap blushed, and stammered his way into his explanation. “Um, well, uh, it was, uh, I wanted to do something for the clean-up effort, you know, not just raising funds, but thanking the, uh, the volunteers. And, I guess, I know that there’s been a lot of talk about us – the Avengers – being responsible for damage and asking what we’re going to do, and I know SHIELD hasn’t said much, and, uh, we’ve not said much because, well, there’s not much to say, because, um, we did do a lot of damage – not intentionally, we didn’t want to –“

 

“Think the Hulk wanted to,” Clint murmured to Natasha, who gave every outward impression of ignoring him.

 

“And, uh,” Cap was still stuttering away, “all the same, I think we should do something, and, uh, Tony was explaining about press and how we couldn’t publically do some things, but maybe there was something we could do, like, I know there was a fundraising concert, and StarkIndustries did a lot to help there. So maybe something like that, and –“

 

“Clearly he’s never heard you sing,” Clint eyed Natasha, hoping for a reaction. She ignored him further, which was all the reaction he needed.

 

“Uh, maybe we could do, like, an auction, and, uh, Tony said he’d auction off some cars, maybe we could do some replica things, um, merchandise – even things like the trading cards for Captain America, things like that, I know there is already stuff with our faces on, but maybe, you know, if we did it, and put profits to places, we could, uh, we could be doing something.”

 

Maria nodded.

 

“Maybe Fury could do a line of designer eye-patches,” Clint said. “Hey, Nat, you did those modelling shots for your cover at SI, do you think we could get you to do a nudie calendar?”

 

Natasha punched him in the arm.

 

“Nothing _naked_ , Nat. You could keep your knickers on.”

 

Natasha punched him again, and aimed a kick at his head for good measure. “Only if you get that satin thong out, I know you kept it.”

 

“It was purple!”

 

Maria was resisting the temptation to roll her eyes.

 

“You know I have a fantastic ass for that,” Clint carried on. “Best ass in SHIELD, three years running.” He struck a ridiculous, hip thrusting pose, and battered his eyelashes at Cap. “What do you say, Cap?”

 

“I, uh, I wouldn’t know, Clint, I, uh, I’m not a faggot.”

 

Maria went very still.

 

Natasha went even more still, beginning to move towards Clint. Or possibly Maria.

 

Clint straightened up, no longer spread over the countertop.

 

Natasha decided she was probably going to have to grab him, but she wasn’t going to stop watching Maria either, because she looked like she did before she started yelling.

 

Clint didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His expression as he spat at Cap’s feet was enough. Then he lunged.

 

Clint fought dirty; he snarled as he attacked. Cap, for his part, looked stunned, and didn’t even get near to defending himself; Clint kneed him in the balls, hard, and Cap doubled over, unprepared. Natasha gave Clint a good minute, and then she grabbed him, and hauled him back.

 

“I – what?” Cap gasped. Evidently no amount of super-soldier serum ever stopped a kick in the balls from hurting. “Natasha?”

 

Natasha hurled a particularly choice epithet at him in Russian, then managed to get enough of Clint in a hold for long enough to drag him out of the room.

 

“What?” Cap tried again.

 

Maria looked at him. She hadn’t moved; Natasha had grabbed Clint a hell of a lot faster than she would have done, and she contemplated, for a moment, finishing what Clint had started. She counted to ten.

 

“Mom?” Sarah’s voice called. “Mom? What’s happening?”

 

“Just a minute,” Maria called back. “Be there in a minute!” She turned back to Cap, and folded her arms. “Captain Rogers, if I ever, _ever_ even hear you _think_ in such terms again, you will find yourself facing far worse than Clint Barton, and Natasha will not be there to help you.”

 

Cap swallowed.

 

Maria stalked out.


	10. Chapter 10

Clint broke out of Nat’s grip relatively easily, pushing her away as he stalked out of the lift towards Phil’s room. He mostly wanted to get the hell away from everyone, or maybe just Cap, or her, or himself. He spun to face Nat, and took a deep breath.

 

“Look, Phil’s asleep,” he said, trying to act like he had his shit together, knowing she’d see straight through him. “I don’t want to wake him.”

 

Nat folded her arms and gave him one of her Looks, the one that promised cutlery and pain.

 

“Leave it, Nat, please,” he sighed, and pushed one hand through his hair. “I overreacted. I just need to calm down.”

 

Nat nodded, but didn’t move.

 

“Please, Nat?” Clint met her eyes, and tried to sound like he was trying do something other than make her go away.

 

She tutted, and then kissed him, softly, on the forehead. “You didn’t overreact,” she told him. “Get some rest.” She turned back to the lift, silent in her bare feet.

 

Nat was a good friend.

 

Clint sighed to himself once the lift doors had slid closed behind her. He didn’t want to wait around for the inevitable shouting; he knew how Fury and Phil approached kicking the shit out of your teammates – he’d experienced it enough in his first few years at SHIELD – and wasn’t looking forward to the yelling, and Phil’s disappointment, and the look he’d end up wearing when his discovered his hero, his friend, was disgusted by him. By Clint.

 

He sighed again, and leant against the cool surface of the wall.

 

“Specialist Barton?” JARVIS’s disembodied voice interrupted him, sounding vaguely worried. Or possibly harassed.

 

“What?” Clint decided there was pretty much no point in ignoring JARVIS, who knew exactly where he was.

 

“Thor is asking for you, would you like to speak with him?”

 

“Thor? Uh – no, thanks. Tell him I’ll talk to him in the morning. I need a bit of peace.”

 

“Very well, Specialist.”

 

JARVIS’s silence left Clint feeling strangely alone. This didn’t particularly bother him; he really didn’t want company right now. He wanted darkness – the dimmed corridor lights were still far too bright – and he needed somewhere that didn’t smell of antiseptic and bleach, however faintly, and he wanted to be away from hate and disappointment and suspicion.

 

He did, in his defence, leave a note for Phil – scribbled on a piece of paper he’d been turning into an aeroplane, which turned out to be part of a report he was supposed to be writing. He left it tucked under Phil’s glasses, where it would be seen.

 

////

 

Phil was used to Clint’s sleeping patterns – such as they were – and didn’t actually start looking for him until a little after breakfast. He’d been slightly disappointed not to find Clint there when he woke up – waking up with him most mornings was a definite advantage of convalescing – but he was also glad to see that Clint had started voluntarily leaving his side; he’d been a little concerned that Clint was avoiding people unless absolutely necessary, although the last couple of weeks had been a little better, since Fury had started insisting on Clint going through SHIELD’s therapy programme and getting his clearance back.

 

It therefore took him a little time before he found Clint’s note – Phil hated wearing his glasses, and never put them on until he absolutely had to. The newspaper and breakfast was abandoned then in favour of calmly asking JARVIS to call Specialist Romanov to him as soon as was convenient.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, stop being a dick. 
> 
> A little homophobic language, but nothing worse than previous chapters.

Bruce slipped into the kitchen in the early hours of the morning, expecting to be alone, and was understandably startled to see Cap slouched at the breakfast bar, staring at a cup of cold coffee like it held the answers to the mysteries of the universe. For a moment, he considered backing away, because Cap’s stance held nothing but trouble, or possibly heartache, or at the very least the sort of thing he probably didn’t want to be dealing with before at least eight. He decided against it, and set the coffee pot to making a fresh pot, then made tea for himself. He set a mug of coffee next to Cap, and sat down.

 

“Want to tell me?” Bruce asked, quietly. He liked Cap, had been glad to see him starting to make friends, get involved.

 

Cap blinked at him, looking like he hadn’t slept all night (or as close as Bruce imagined a super-soldier could), and reached for the coffee.

 

“You look like you could do with telling someone,” Bruce added.

 

“I fucked up,” Cap said baldly.

 

Bruce cocked his head at him, hoping his expression hit on “sympathetic” rather than “oh hell, what now”.

 

“I think I said something to Clint – and to Agent Romanov and AD Hill – well, I know I said something, but I don’t know what to do, and I think it means there is a problem with Tony as well.”

 

Bruce nodded, sipped his tea, and waited.

 

“Because I think I picked up on what I said from Tony – I mean, I knew the words before, but I think this is one of those things where I don’t know enough about what happens now, and I followed Tony’s lead, and that was probably not a good idea when it comes to language.”

 

Bruce resisted the urge to bang his head against the breakfast bar. He considered getting a cup of coffee. Possibly something to drink. Maybe he could Hulk out and not deal with this for a bit.

 

“I need to apologise to Clint,” Cap was saying. “But JARVIS can’t find him, and I think Agent Romanov doesn’t want to help me. I need to apologise to her. And AD Hill too.”

 

“Please tell me you said something about SHIELD,” Bruce said, before he could stop himself.

 

“Um, no.”

 

Bruce wondered if six in the morning was too early for Irish coffee for a man who hadn’t had alcohol or coffee in four years.

 

**////**

 

Pepper smiled into the pillow and arched against Tony’s warmth, enjoying the luxury of a lie-in as much as the ache of a lengthy bout of lovemaking. Tony had been remarkably easy to drag out of the lab – and had been loving and attentive, rather than distant and grouchy. She’d been relieved, not in the mood for an argument, or for Tony being hyper and distracted.

 

“Too early,” Tony muttered into her neck as she shifted. “Don’t get up.”

 

“Not getting up,” Pepper smiled, and let him wrap his fingers around her breast and kiss her neck sleepily.

 

“JARVIS, make coffee for about half an hour?” Tony called, pressing his erection against Pepper and letting her know exactly what he had in mind. Not that she minded.

 

“Certainly, sir,” JARVIS replied. “Although you may wish to get dressed –“

 

JARVIS’ words were cut off by the noise of someone hammering on the bedroom door. Pepper didn’t want to know how they’d gotten into the suite in the first place, and sat up, wrapping the sheet firmly around her.

 

“Get the fuck up, Stark,” Natasha was shouting. At least, Pepper thought it was Natasha. “JARVIS, either open the door or I will.”

 

Pepper eyed Tony, who was pulling the duvet over his head.  “Tony, what have you done?”

 

The door made several unpleasant protesting noises, and slid open slowly, opened by Natasha, who – and Pepper wasn’t an expert, because the tiny Russian assassin didn’t really do expressions that often – looked _pissed_. Pepper resisted the urge to sigh.

 

Natasha hissed something in Russian – Pepper was pretty certain it was something to do with Tony’s parentage and bestiality – and stalked in, advancing on Tony’s duvet-covered form. She was followed by Maria, who looked about as murderous as a woman pushing a pyjama-clad Phil Coulson in a wheelchair could. Phil looked merely irritated, and Pepper started to worry.

 

“It is too early,” Tony’s voice came from under the duvet. “Whatever you want can wait until after breakfast, at least. Make an appointment with JARVIS.”

 

Natasha snorted, and yanked the duvet off him in one swift movement.

 

“Hey, if you wanted to climb in to bed with me, you could have just asked!” Tony rolled over and smirked, not bothering to cover himself.

 

Pepper tried not to squeak indignantly, and scrambled to cover herself. Maria threw her a dressing gown, and returned to her position by Phil’s side.

 

“Thanks, Hill. Nice of you not to gawp at another man’s girl,” Tony’s mouth was evidently still running.

 

Maria just raised an eyebrow. Pepper wondered if all SHIELD agents learnt that expression in training – Phil’s was even more bland, just that slight frown of disapproval.

 

“Shut up, Stark,” Natasha snarled. “And get dressed.”

 

“Why?”

 

“You may find our conversation more comfortable if you are dressed,” Phil said, his voice as pleasant as always.

 

“I’m comfortable. You got a problem, Agent Agent?” Tony didn’t _actually_ waggle his penis in Phil’s face, but he might as well have done. Pepper  tightened the belt of her dressing gown and wished she had knickers on.

 

“Very well. Mr Stark, please explain how exactly you managed to convince Captain Rogers that homophobic language is acceptable in everyday conversation –“

 

“Oh, Tony,” Pepper heard herself mutter.

 

“And when you have done so, you will wish to apologise not only to Captain Rogers, and explain exactly why you have attempted to hurt your teammates in this way, but you will apologise to Specialists Romanov and Barton, and AD Hill.”

 

“But not you, Agent? I thought you were as queer as the rest of them,” Tony snarked, grinning.

 

Pepper whirled on Tony. “Tony! What the _hell_?”

 

“I thought you knew Agent was fucking Barton?” Tony smiled at her. “You didn’t really believe that whole violinist nonsense, did you, Pep?”

 

“Mr Stark,” Phil replied, unblinking, “I am entirely indifferent to your opinion of my sexuality or my relationship. I am concerned with restricting the damage you have already done, and the implications for the ongoing work of the Initiative.”

 

“Tony, you’ve _never_ said anything like that,” Pepper could hear herself starting to screech, and she attempted to get a hold of her temper. “Tell me what exactly is going on here!”

 

Tony said nothing, just leant back against the headboard and folded his arms behind him.

 

“It’s quite simple, Ms Potts,” Maria said. Pepper tried not to sigh; she had been hoping they’d moved past that point. “Captain Rogers used a particular term to address Specialist Barton last night, and has since revealed that due to Mr Stark’s conversation, he had been under the impression that his language was acceptable. As Mr Stark has – as you have pointed out – not previously shown any inclination towards homophobia, we wish to understand his intent. We also need him to ascertain whether or not Specialist Barton has damaged JARVIS’ surveillance systems, in order to discover if Specialist Barton has left the tower.”

 

Pepper wondered if a hysterical breakdown was appropriate. She swallowed. “Clint’s missing?”

 

“As of this morning,” Phil replied.

 

“My apologies, Ms Potts,” JARVIS interrupted. “I have been unable to locate Specialist Barton for the last few hours. I suspect he has accessed my systems, although I am running diagnostics to check. He may simply have found a way around my surveillance.”

 

“It’s ok, JARVIS,” Pepper found herself reassuring the AI. “It’s not your fault. Please, let me know if you locate Clint, or find out where he may have gone.”

 

“We will locate Specialist Barton later,” Natasha stated. “Stark will talk first.”

 

Pepper shuddered; Natasha’s tone didn’t so much promise a world of pain as much imply that by the time she was done with him, Tony would be begging to be flayed alive as the nicer option. He was currently trying to avoid looking directly at either Natasha or herself, and had apparently settled on eyeing the ceiling and whistling tunelessly.

 

“Tony, please,” Pepper said, reaching out to him. “Talk to me.”

 

Tony rolled his eyes.

 

“Tony,” Pepper tried again, although now she was becoming frustrated. Or possibly tearful. Or both, not that it helped much. “Come on, Tony. I just want to understand what’s going on.”

 

“Mr Stark,” Phil began, his even voice soothing Pepper. “If there is a problem, I assure you, we will endeavour to find a solution. Your cooperation in this would be appreciated.”

 

“And tidier,” Natasha added.

 

Pepper tried to ignore Tony’s flinch under her hand, and hoped that Natasha hadn’t made this worse.

 

“I am not feeling particularly patient,” Natasha said, addressing nobody in particular. “I was woken early by Doctor Banner and Captain Rogers, and I spent several minutes before I had drunk any coffee attempting to explain to Thor why he is to accompany Sarah in the car rather than flying or taking the subway. I have still not had any coffee.”

 

“I’m sure Mr Stark will explain himself shortly,” Phil said. “Without recourse to actual violence.”

 

Natasha sighed. “I make no promises.”

 

Pepper wondered if taking the morning off hadn’t actually been a massive mistake. Or maybe it had been signing that first contract to work as an admin assistant at StarkIndustries fifteen years ago. Maybe it had been giving in to loving Tony. That was possibly her mistake. Then she wouldn’t be here, or having to deal with whatever the hell was going on while not wearing underwear. This sounded like one of Tony’s hare-brained attempts at getting out of something, and she was faintly worried to discover she was actually relieved it didn’t involve robots. Yet.

 

“God, Tony!” Pepper found herself yelling again. “Why the hell do you do this? Is this to do with Phil not being dead? The time you spent googling cellists – yes, I noticed that, I am not an idiot – or is it to do with Steve not thinking your father was the bastard he was to you? Fucking hell, Tony! You can’t just come out and say something, can you, you have to create some fucking crackpot scheme to try to play stupid games with people like you don’t want them to get too close to you! You can’t just try to see if you might actually get along with people, no, you’re Tony fucking Stark, world’s greatest fucking genius, and you don’t need people!”

 

“Pepper, I –“ Tony started.

 

Pepper, however, wasn’t stopping, “You did this to me, you made me CEO instead of telling me you were dying! You gave Happy a fucking rolex but you won’t say thank you! You tell people you don’t like being handed things because of fucking _germs_ , but you do it just to be a dick because you never gave a flying fuck about germs when you were screwing every slut between here and Malibu on a weekly fucking basis!”

 

“Pep, please.”

 

“Don’t _Pep_ me, Tony Stark! Explain yourself _right fucking now_ , you selfish bastard, or so help me god, I will walk away, right now!”

 

Tony actually looked worried. And deflated.

 

Natasha nodded to Pepper, once. Maria might have smiled, momentarily.

 

“Fuck,” Tony said, eloquently. “Pepper, please can we talk about this, just the two of us? Without Agent and company?”

 

“How many times do you want to explain yourself, Tony?” Pepper sighed. “Because I’m not doing your apologies for you, not this time.”

 

Tony nodded.


	12. Chapter 12

Natasha listened to Stark even though she would rather have throttled him. Slowly. Possibly with his own intestines, even if that was messy and would almost certainly upset Pepper, and Natasha tried not to upset people she thought might consider her a friend, at least not with the sort of violence that involved a SHIELD clean-up crew and new carpets. And she wondered if Pepper didn’t want to throttle Stark herself – she was as angry as she ever got.

 

Stark had, it seems – and Natasha believed him, because he wasn’t stupid enough to lie to Pepper, and precisely stupid enough to do exactly what he described – not been entirely happy with the whole _Avengers Tower_ thing, even though it had been his idea in the first place. He was a selfish man, and Natasha understood the desire for privacy, for a space he could control.

 

His exact reason for manipulating Rogers, of all people, was pretty simple – and Natasha saw the logic in it. Rogers _was_ a little naïve, certainly more so than the rest of them, not as gullible as Thor, but Thor was nowhere as lonely or desperate to understand. Thor was smarter than he looked, and unlike Rogers, he didn’t have a driving need to see the good in people. Rogers never expected duplicity.

 

And then, of course, Rogers came from a place, a culture, where homosexuality had been illegal, hated and feared and misunderstood if it was acknowledged at all. He knew all the words, he hadn’t been comfortable talking about the subject. Stark said it hadn’t occurred to him until he’d realised Rogers was struggling to know how to deal. It served two purposes – being deliberately cruel to Rogers (Natasha could understand that temptation) and driving a wedge into the middle of the team. Natasha considered his assessment of the Avengers’ collective weaknesses to be fairly accurate; she and Clint were too closely-knit, and while she would have considered Bruce’s fear of hurting others as a greater weakness, perhaps, than Rogers’ man-out-of-time problem. But Stark liked Bruce, and he didn’t like Rogers much, even if he admitted a certain grudging admiration for the man.

 

Stark’s narrative suggested – to Natasha’s relief, which she told herself was for the others’ sake, not hers – that he wasn’t homophobic. Natasha knew for a fact that his playboy years had certainly included a few male lovers, but that had never stopped plenty of other bigots. Pepper had looked relieved at this part, and Natasha wondered who in her immediate family was gay –perhaps a cousin, maybe a childhood friend. Natasha made a note on her mental list to find out.

 

Natasha also noticed – and she was certain Phil and Maria would have noticed this as well, because she knew how they thought – that while Stark was definitely out-Starking himself here, he had also drawn attention to a few issues that they’d all being either ignoring or hoping time would overcome. Firstly, Rogers didn’t have a clue. At the moment, he was floundering about until someone pointed him at something and told him to hit it with his shield, which Natasha considered one of his endearing qualities, but it probably wasn’t particularly helpful in the long-run, especially as Fury had apparently tapped him as the leader of their merry band. Then, there was the issue of them actually being a team. That had worked while they’d all thought Phil was dead, but the shared immediacy of grief tended to lose said immediacy after several weeks of not having a death to grieve over. And even Natasha would admit to herself that killing someone they’d all grown attached to every time there was a threat was not going to be an ideal long-term.

 

Maybe she should lay all this in front of Sitwell and watch him have a breakdown. There was a reason the Avengers were given to Phil in the first place.

 

She considered the third issue – that of how they were going to establish an identity if Stark was having problems dealing with them all in his space. They couldn’t return to SHIELD – not without becoming part of it again, and not even Fury wanted that, although he wanted the Avengers where he could keep an eye on them.

 

“And, uh, I think that’s it,” Stark finished, shifting the pillow he’d placed in his lap during Pepper’s outburst. “Yeah. Only child, bad at sharing, plays recently-defrosted guy, fools him into being a dick to other teammates, still bad at sharing, might have come up with a way to fund team all the same, would understand if the team didn’t give a fuck. Definitely sorry.”

 

Phil nodded, and leant back a little in his wheelchair.  “I think that’ll be up to the rest of the team, Mr Stark,” he said quietly. “I believe it may be something to address once apologies have been made. Perhaps you should talk to Captain Rogers now.”

 

“Yeah,” Stark scrubbed his face with his hand. “I should. Fuck. Do you think he likes shoes, Pepper?”

 

“I think he’d like an apology more, Tony,” Pepper said softly.

 

“How about you, Natasha?” Tony tried to grin at her, and Natasha saw it wasn’t really reaching his eyes. “Shoes or apology?”

 

“Fruit basket,” Natasha replied, because while she was still annoyed, she understood now. And her remaining outwardly annoyed would not help now.

 

“I’ll get on that. I’m sorry, though. For what it’s worth. To you as well, Hill, Agent – Phil. I – I am a monumental fuck-up.”

 

“We noticed,” Maria replied, starting to wheel Phil backwards out of the room. “Talk to Rogers. We’ll start hunting Barton down.”

 

“No hitting,” Phil added.


	13. Chapter 13

Steve did not punch Tony, even if he wanted to. In part, because Pepper was hovering in the background, looking concerned and upset and annoyed, and he figured that Tony was going to get plenty of trouble from her. Then there was Bruce, standing next to Pepper and looking equally concerned, and nervous, and Steve was pretty certain that he had a decent hold on the Hulk, but he didn’t want to see if a punch-up between him and Tony would test that hold too far.

 

He’d already spoken to Maria and Natasha – after he’d thumped on Natasha’s door to wake them when Phil had asked him what the hell was going on (and he didn’t want to know how Phil had known he’d been involved, but he suspected JARVIS had ratted on him). The two women had treated him coldly, but accepted his apology with just enough grace to make him feel confident that Natasha wasn’t about to hamstring him; Maria had simply nodded, and shaken his hand, and excused herself to  get her daughter ready for school.

 

His apology to Phil had been awkward; the older SHIELD agent showed little in the way of emotion, but his voice betrayed a touch of worry for Clint. Thor, who had apparently been summoned to push Phil’s wheelchair (or he’d just appeared; he gravitated towards noise), had said little – for once – and accepted being charged with seeing Maria’s daughter to school with visible relief at not having to deal with what he didn’t quite understand, even when Natasha had hissed something in his ear that made his cheerful expression falter.

 

Phil had asked him several pointed questions, about what Tony had said, about what he felt, about what Clint had done, and Steve had answered carefully, but almost automatically – Phil’s tone demanded a sitrep rather than an explanation, and he was grateful to the agent. Steve was trying not to give in to the urge to curl up and die of embarrassment, which was even harder than not punching Tony, because he _knew_ he was at fault, he’d been too trusting, too quick to believe what was easier to believe because it fitted with what he’d know before. And he knew he’d hurt Clint, however unintentionally, and apologising was definitely not his strong point – because he was supposed to stand up to bullies, not be the bully.

 

JARVIS had rather quickly ascertained that Clint had, in fact, left the building – once Tony had fiddled with his systems, and declared that Clint hadn’t done any major damage beyond wiping the record of him fiddling and stopping JARVIS from recording in a service corridor for a few minutes (Steve assumed this was more complicated than it sounded). Natasha rolled her eyes at this news, and glanced at Phil, who studied her for a moment, and nodded.

 

“Taking a car,” Natasha announced to Tony. “Try not to fuck things up more.”

 

Tony just nodded.

 

“We’ll be here when you get back,” Pepper said, and smiled a little, for the first time all day. “Tony will be paying for dinner.”

 

“Not pizza,” Maria replied.

 

“Not pizza,” Bruce agreed.

 

“You know where Clint is?” Steve asked anxiously. Pepper’s smile had heralded the lightening of the atmosphere, but he’d evidently missed something.

 

“Clint is easy to find,” Natasha said. “He’s predictable when he’s upset.”

 

“Will you be able to get him to come back?”

 

Natasha smiled.

 

“You’re going to have to talk to him first,” Phil said. “We’ll let him decide.”

 

Steve nodded.

 

“You’ll take me to him?”

 

“It wasn’t how I planned to spend my first day outside the tower, but yes,” Phil replied dryly.

 

 

**////**

 

 

Clint was sitting on the edge of the roof of a walk-up block in a pleasant enough area of Brooklyn, ignored by a couple of smoking teenagers and a middle-aged lady watering some plants. The teenagers nodded to Phil familiarly, and the lady offered them a smile, greeting Phil by name and asking what had happened.

 

“Apparently my office block wasn’t built to withstand alien invasion,” Phil replied, returning the clasp of her hand. “Day release from hospital.”

 

“You look like shit,” she replied, shrugging. “Good to see you though. Shalia’s been picking up your mail.”

 

“Thanks, Candy. I’ll stop by in a bit.”

 

“Get well, Phil,” Candy patted him on the shoulder, nodded to Natasha, and again to Steve, and picked up her watering can again.

 

Phil, instead of letting Steve push his wheelchair further across the roof, indicated that he should go and talk to Clint himself; without waiting, Natasha wheeled him back towards the roof door. Steve wondered why Phil had let Natasha help him up the stairs, but shrugged, and let them go on their way. They had evidently decided that he didn’t need an audience.

 

“What do you want?” Clint demanded, not turning to look at Steve, staring out over the rooftops instead, dangling his legs over the edge of the building.

 

“To, uh, to apologise,” Steve said, sitting awkwardly on the wall, his back to the edge.

 

Clint snorted.

 

“I’m sorry for what I said, Clint,” he continued, trying not to stumble over the words. “I said something stupid, thinking it was ok.”

 

“Because you’ve only just woken up and it’s not the nineteen-thirties any more, right?” Clint snapped.

 

“No. Uh – because I didn’t think. I, uh, I believed things wouldn’t, uh, couldn’t have changed so much. I was wrong. I didn’t want to be reminded and, well, it was easier to believe what Tony said and, uh,” he trailed off under Clint’s sardonic glare.

 

“But you still have a problem with queers,” Clint said, like a statement. “Fucking soldiers.”

 

“No! Uh, I mean – I don’t have a problem. Not at all. I, uh, it’s different, the way things are, but that’s a good thing. A really good thing. I just – I, uh, Tony told me some things, showed me some things, and I believed him. He was lying to me.”

 

“Yeah, sure, blame the other guy.”

 

“I’m not. Not completely. He lied to me, and that’s, uh, that’s my problem. I, uh, I just want to explain. And apologise.”

 

“You’ve apologised,” Clint said. “Congratulations.”

 

“I didn’t know anyone who was gay, growing up,” Steve said. “Who was, uh, openly gay.”

 

“For good reason,” Clint snorted. “I’m not gay, Cap.”

 

“But you – you and Phil, uh, you’re a couple. Two men. That’s gay, right?”

 

Clint eyed him. “You really do know shit, don’t you?”

 

“Uh. Um, yes. I know shit. Uh, nothing, that is.”

 

Clint nodded, thoughtfully, staring into the distance still. Steve was slightly grateful for that – this conversation was awkward enough without Clint glaring at him. He tended to look like he was mentally cataloguing all the places he could stick an arrow in you.

 

“I’m bisexual, if you want to put a label on it,” Clint said into the uncomfortable silence. “I like men and women.”

 

“Oh,” Steve said, because the moment seemed to call for it. “So, uh, it’s a choice thing?”

 

“Nope,” Clint swung his legs into empty space. “No choice about it. I fuck women, I fuck men, I don’t choose one over the other. I don’t know why. It’s not important in that way to me.”

 

Steve thought about it.

 

“It’s like,” Clint continued, noticing Steve was floundering, “You like women, right?”

 

“Uh, yes.”

 

“And you didn’t choose to like women, you didn’t force yourself to look at a hot girl and think ‘yeah, I’d hit that’?”

 

“Hit?”

 

“Fuck. Have sex with. Sorry.”

 

“Right. I mean, no. No forcing, that is.”

 

“Ok. So the way you feel about women, I feel about women _and_ men. Some people feel that way about men, or women, or they don’t feel that way about anybody at all, and it’s just the way they are.”

 

“And it’s ok?”

 

“Eh – lots of people don’t really get being asexual. Lots of people hate gay people, but it’s not against the law to be in a relationship with another man, or another woman, if that’s your thing.”

 

“And you have to be careful about what I say? The words, I mean. I, uh, I can’t say queer?”

 

Clint chuckled. “Cap, man, this is complicated stuff. Let’s go with no, though. For the moment.”

 

“Some of the things Tony showed me – people used queer, fag, things like that, to talk about themselves. I think that’s why, um, I believed him.”

 

“Yeah,” Clint waved away an enterprising pigeon. “It’s – fuck, I’m no good at this, I’m not really into knowing all these things, Phil is much better. Hill is best for this, she’s got a fucking _Women’s Studies degree_ somewhere, she knows it better. Look, it’s one thing for someone like me to say ‘I’m queer’, because it’s me, talking about myself, and I’m ok with who I am now. But words like that – they can hurt, Cap. People put a lot of hate into the words. Kids at the home used to play _smear the queer_ and kick the shit out of kids they thought were faggy. I knew a girl – long time ago – got kicked down the steps by her dad because someone said she was a dyke. Nice girl too. Three broken ribs and a fractured arm. Sometimes the words come with violence and hate. Too often. So it’s best – it’s best if you don’t use those words.”

 

Steve nodded. “I’m sorry for what I said, Clint,” he said.

 

Clint jostled him. “We’re good, Cap. You’re getting it. Hill’s gonna stick you in SHIELD’s sensitivity training, I imagine. Enjoy that.”

 

“I think I need it.”

 

“It’s – I think sometimes it might seem a bit overboard, you know. Too much. But better to be too much, and not be a fucking arse, than be an arse unintentionally.”

 

“Like me.”

 

“Like you.”

 

“Are you going to kiss with tongues now?” Natasha asked, and Steve jumped. “I promised Maria I’d take pictures.”

 

“How long have you been standing there?” Steve demanded.

 

Natasha smirked at him.

 

“Phil is having coffee with the woman with the cats.”

 

“Mrs Marten,” Clint supplied.

 

“Cats,” Natasha continued. “Lots of them. Princess is going to have _kittens_.”

 

“Ask your girlfriend,” Clint replied.

 

“He said it would be nice if you stopped in, after you picked up some things. Also, Candy has been watering your plants.”

 

“Your plants.”

 

Natasha shrugged.

 

“You live here?” Steve asked Clint.

 

“Yeah, couple of years now. Nice people.”

 

“And, uh, does Phil, uh,” he trailed off.

 

Clint nodded. “Better go pack.”

 

“You’re coming back?”

 

“Phil needs his PT,” Clint shrugged. “And Natasha is eyeballing me.”

 

“I like the hot water,” she said. “And not buying groceries.”

 

“You’re easy to please.”

 

“You always found it difficult.”

 

“Cute,” Clint grinned, and stretched. Natasha punched him in the stomach.

 

Steve tried to pretend he wasn’t feeling awkward.

 

“Come on, Cap. I’ll sneak you into the den. Show you Phil’s collection of Cap figures.”

 

“He said,” Natasha told them, linking her arm through Steve’s, “and I quote here, that he would let me break every one of your fingers with a garlic press.”


	14. Chapter 14

Natasha was relieved that Cap had managed to apologise to Clint properly – enough that extracting Phil from the clutches of the cat lady and the ride back to the tower had been only minimally awkward (mostly because Phil had almost immediately fallen asleep, and snored). She had only eavesdropped on their conversation a little bit – she was a spy, after all – but had missed whether or not Clint had told Cap about some of the nastier periods of his life. Even she didn’t know the details of all of it, and she wasn’t sure if Phil did either. She figured that it was not something Clint really wanted to think about, or tell her about. She made a mental note to see if he’d told the SHIELD psychologist he was still seeing, and to encourage him to talk to them about it if not. Maybe that would help.

 

She leant against the doorframe of the communal living room, watching; its occupants had not – as usual – noticed her presence, and she considered announcing herself for a moment, but decided to watch. Evidently, the school day was over, and while Maria and Sitwell were in a meeting with Phil downstairs, someone had decided Thor was allowed to babysit. Or had wandered through and come across Sarah, whose homework had been abandoned in favour of that ridiculous show about improbably-coloured horses, and ice cream. The blame for either of those could lie with either of them. She suspected the ribbons in Thor’s hair were probably Sarah’s fault, however. Probably. It was hard to tell.

 

“Your father seemed pleased by the son of Coul’s return,” Thor said, gesturing with his spoon.

 

“He’s been friends with Uncle Phil for ages,” Sarah replied, dragging out the ‘a’ in ages.

 

Natasha smiled.

 

“’Sides,” she continued, “He knows how much Uncle Phil wants to be friends with Captain America. And he doesn’t want mum to be upset. Or Natasha.”

 

“Your family seem most unusual by Midguardian measures,” Thor mused.

 

Natasha considered interrupting, unsure if she wanted Sarah worrying over how people judged her, but Sarah’s reply stilled her.

 

“Maybe. I mean, lots of the kids have divorced parents, and sometimes their parents have gotten new boyfriends or girlfriends. And mine have always been divorced, or at least, I don’t remember them being married, I was only tiny. Mindy in my class, she says it’s weird that my parents still live together, but she’s jealous, because her dad lives in Seattle.”

 

“Seattle?”

 

“A far away place,” Sarah waved a hand carelessly, imitating Thor.

 

“This Mindy must miss her father.”

 

“She’s horrible though.”

 

“Nonetheless, you would not like to be so far from your father.”

 

Sarah nodded. “She’s still horrible. It’s ok. I try to be nice to her all the same. She says my mum is a _lesbian_.”

 

“I am unfamiliar with this word.”

 

“I think – I looked it up – that it’s a girl who loves another girl, like my mum loves Natasha, so it’s true. But Mindy says it like its bad, when I know it isn’t.”

 

Natasha considered having words with this Mindy. Or possibly her parents. She could justify a trip to Seattle to make sure both of them had a talk with their daughter.

 

“Indeed not. In my home, it is not unusual for women to live with other women as lovers. Or men with men, as do the son of Coul and Hawkeye.”

 

Sarah grinned. “And if you’re a god, and you say it’s ok –“

 

“I do declare it to be ok, indeed,” Thor interrupted. “Love is not something to be treated stingily, as though one possesses only a finite amount!”

 

“What’s fin-it?”

 

“Finite,” JARVIS supplied, “it means limited, Miss Sarah. I believe his highness believes that love should be shared, because humans – or in his case, Asguardians – have an unlimited amount, they can love many people.”

 

“Thanks JARVIS!” Sarah grinned at the ceiling.

 

“Our friend JARVIS is correct,” Thor studied his empty bowl with an expression akin to that of a kicked puppy. “Love cannot be measured, Lady Sarah. For this reason I do not understand the good captain’s words.”

 

“It’s – it’s hard, Thor,” Sarah scraped her bowl noisily. “My mum told me that sometimes people can be scared of things they don’t know, or if they’ve been taught it’s a bad thing. And sometimes they say nasty things because they’re scared. I think maybe Steve has been taught one way, and maybe he will change his mind now he knows different things. It’s ok, my mum will explain it to him. Better than me.”

 

“Your explanation is most clear,” Thor was cleaning the remainder of his melted ice-cream out of his bowl with one massive finger. “I too hope the good captain will change his mind.”

 

Natasha smiled, and stepped into the room, making sure her heels clicked on the floor. “I think Cap is already changing his mind, Thor,” she said, and leant over the back of the sofa to kiss the top of Sarah’s head.

 

“Is Hawkeye well?” Thor asked, concern radiating from every pore.

 

“He is. Pepper wants to know if you’ll be joining everyone for dinner. If you’ve not filled up on ice-cream.”

 

Sarah blushed. “We only had a little bit! It’s been a hard day for everyone and school was tough and dad always eats ice-cream when he’s had a tough day and please don’t tell mum.”

 

“It’s ok, little one,” Natasha smiled. “I can keep a secret.”

 

“It was my idea, Lady Widow,” Thor said. “I enjoy your ice-cream a great deal.”

 

Natasha wondered what Thor had been like when he’d been judged immature.

 

“I agreed,” Sarah pointed out, apparently unwilling to let her partner-in-snacking take the blame for her.

 

Natasha had to laugh. “Cross my heart,” she said, using the gestures Clint had taught her years ago, and sliding into an armchair. “Who did your hair, Thor?”

 

“The Lady Sarah,” Thor announced, “she has most nimble fingers.”

 

“Can I do your hair, Natasha?”

 

“Very well, little one. I shall be dressed for dinner, it seems.”

 

“Are dad and me staying for dinner?” Sarah looked gleeful, gesturing for Natasha to sit on the floor in front of her perch on the sofa.

 

“Yes,” Natasha said. “No pink, please, Sarah. It clashes.”


	15. Not an epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not an epilogue, but it is Steve's last bit.

“Cap, man. Aww, Cap, Rodgers!” Clint is grinning, and patting Steve on the arm, and waving bacon around. “It’s not like that. Agent Coulson – Phil – was my handler for years, the one who’d supervise me and be in charge of ops and all of that, for SHIELD. I called him _sir_ for years before he made a move. Or I made a move. There was a lot of moving. Its habit – Phil likes to keep things separate. I mean, it’s not a secret or anything, but there’s work and then there’s us.”

 

Steve nods. He has taken to asking questions. A lot of questions, but Clint doesn’t really mind, because it seems to be how Cap shows he cares, and how he doesn’t want to make another mistake. He’s also noticed that Stark is spending a little more time around all of them, but rarely one-on-one. This bothers him less, because Stark is fucking weird, and annoying, and entertaining as hell. Stark invariably appears when Clint makes pancakes, because over the last couple of months, everyone has learnt that Clint’s pancakes are awesome (and Natasha is not allowed near them, because she either burns or drops them or magically turns the milk). Clint arrives earlier than everyone, makes a huge stack, and the first thing Steve does when he arrives is carry a plate down to Phil. Then he is in charge of bacon. Its strange how quickly traditions settle in, and despite their falling-out last week, Clint and Steve quickly got back into their routine.

 

“And it is always fun to catch the new junior agents trying to work out whether or not Coulson is actually a robot,” Natasha saunters in, and helps herself to Clint’s pancakes. He tries to batter her way, ineffectively.

 

She smiles at Steve, and he tries to ignore that she’s wearing a baggy t-shirt and a pair of men’s boxers, and he makes a note to ask JARVIS what, or who, a pussy riot is. JARVIS’s safe search is better than Google’s.

 

“The one about Phil being the reason for Fury only having one eye was the best,” Clint grins at her. “Although, Maria’s one about Fury being Phil’s secret father was excellent.”

 

“One of the agents tried to tell me he once stopped a robbery with a bag of flour,” Steve said.

 

“That one’s true. I’ve got the video,” Natasha replied. “He’s not actually a dom though.”

 

“Steve was trying to ask me that,” Clint grinned.

 

“JARVIS, did you see that?” Natasha asks.

 

“I did, Specialist.”

 

“Save it to my personal files.”

 

“Already done, Specialist.”

 

Steve wonders if he’s as red as he thinks.

 

“To be fair, dear heart, you do call Phil _sir_ a lot,” Natasha points out.

 

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make him a dom.”

 

“That would be the separate hooks for _work handcuffs_ and _home handcuffs_ , yes?” Natasha’s look is arch, and she reaches for another pancake.

 

Clint throws her to the floor, and she pulls him with her, and they wrestle, Clint laughing and yelping, Natasha calling him _Coulson’s little pet_ and trying to give him a wedgie.

 

“Ten dollars on Clint,” Maria says, stepping around them on her way to the coffee machine.

 

Steve blinks.

 

Whenever he sees Maria at the tower, she is almost always in her SHIELD uniform, and even at her most relaxed, she has always been neatly dressed, her hair in a tidy bun (Phil has the same aura of efficiency even in his pyjamas, and Steve wonders if it’s a requirement for senior SHIELD agents). Now her hair is in a loose braid, wisping around her face, and she is wearing shorts that reveal long, strong legs – and a writhing tattoo that traces a path from her foot, around her calf, and up her thigh, under the shirt. Steve does _not_ want to know where it goes. He is definitely not thinking about that, and he is definitely not going red for the umpteenth time that day.

 

“Traitor,” Natasha says, taking a break from hitting Clint with his own fist and chanting _stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself_.

 

“I know the odds,” Maria replies. “You’ve not had enough time to get enough coffee into you.”

 

Steve is _not_ staring, and he is _not_ gawping.

 

“They’re good odds,” she tells him. “Really. Nat requires at least three cups of coffee before she’s got her game face on.”

 

“I will grind him into the carpet, and then I will do the same to you, and _then_ I will have coffee,” Natasha declares. “Coffee and _blood_.” Clint has her in a headlock.

 

“That sounds gross,” Stark says. “Really, like, really gross. Morning Cap. Holy fuck, sweet ink, AD Hill. Is that not against regulations?”

 

Maria eyes him over the edge of her coffee mug, and reaches for Clint’s pancakes.

 

“Seriously, that must have hurt like a bitch. Does it go all the way up?”

 

She chews on a pancake, and sips at her coffee. “Want to see, Stark?” She has Natasha’s deadpan voice down perfectly.

 

Stark backs away.

 

“Good – ow – choice – ow, ow, Nat, ow – Stark,” Clint is definitely being ground into the carpet there. Or at least the tiles. “Yield, Nat. Budapest! Ow.”

 

Natasha lets him go, and stands smoothly, then pulls him to his feet.

 

“The hell happened to my pancakes?” Clint demands.

 

“Not me,” Steve says, holding up his hands.

 

“There are pancakes?” Stark asks. He is pouring far too much sugar into his coffee. He knows there are pancakes in the offering, it’s _Thursday_. Or Thorsday, as Thor would insist if he hadn’t disappeared off to New Mexico.

 

“There were,” Maria says.

 

Natasha swipes at Clint with a spatula.

 

“Oh hell no,” he takes it from her. “No kitchen implements. Or no pancakes.” He turns back to the cupboards, and busies himself with making more batter. “JARVIS, we’re going to need more eggs.”

 

“Of course, Specialist.”

 

Steve is rapidly coming to the conclusion that he’s living in a madhouse. Natasha, meanwhile, pushes a refilled mug of coffee into his hands – black, the way he likes it – and drapes herself on the stool next to Maria, lounging against her, and sipping from her own mug. It has a spider sitting in a bowl of soup on it, and the legend “what’s black and white and red all over?” on the other side.

 

“Seriously, Hill, those tats are awesome. Like, me-awesome, which is pretty awesome,” Stark babbles at Maria. Steve suspects he hasn’t slept in several days.

 

“Thank you,” she replies serenely.

 

“You are just full of surprises. First, you have a kid, then you’re doing the beast with two backs with the loveliest assassin in the world – and seriously, people would like to be assassinated just to get the chance – and now you’ve got _ink_. Dude. What else are you holding out on us?”

 

Steve held his breath, wondering if he should try to make Tony go to sleep before he said anything more.

 

“I don’t like orange juice,” Maria replies, calmly.

 

It seems Maria is not in the mood for a fight today, and she is in a good enough mood to actually humour Tony. Steve suspects this will not last until the last session of the ‘diversity and sensitivity training’ that Sitwell ordered the pair of them to attend, and which Maria runs; some of the junior agents were almost as bad as Tony when they started on Monday.

 

“Does Fury know you’re carrying those?”

 

“Please, Stark. Think a little,” she looks amused. “You seriously think SHIELD can’t deal with a few tattoos?”

 

“Doesn’t it get in the way of going undercover?” Steve asks, because he is curious, and he doesn’t want to find out what Stark is going to say next, because he has _that_ look on his face, the one that spells inappropriateness and Natasha losing her smile. “I mean, they’re pretty noticeable.”

 

“I don’t do undercover,” she replies. “. When I go out in the field, people know I’m SHIELD.”

 

“And the whole catsuit-uniform thing probably helps, right?” Bruce adds, plonking himself at the table with a yawn.

 

Steve is still not used to the 21st century, but he’s getting there. Sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't remember where I read it, but I like the idea of Clint and Natasha having a "safe word" even though they're not having sex (any more). 
> 
> The (terrible) joke goes "what's black and white and red all over?" "a redback spider swimming in tomato soup". I'll be here all week. Tip your waiter.


	16. Actually an epiloge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue disguised as porn. Insert your own happy ending joke.

Clint perches on the bed beside Phil, who is buttoning a plain white shirt; he has a tie around his neck, and his bright blue socks are hidden by highly-polished black shoes. Clint is wearing a pair of old leather uniform trousers and an equally old black t-shirt, and he’s spent part of the morning on the range.

 

“You going into the office?” Clint asks. He likes the idea of Phil going back to work, even part-time, because it means Phil is well again (or at least, ten weeks after his injury, Stark’s doctors have declared his ribs have healed sufficiently that he can consider a light workload, part time, with no heavy lifting). However, part of him wants to spend more time together. Not that they don’t spend lots of time together at HQ, but there is less opportunity for touching and kissing and being the sort of sad sappy fucker Clint generally derides.

 

“I’m going to set up an office here,” Phil replies. “If The Avengers are going to be here – and it looks like they will be – then I’ll need a base here.”

 

Clint nods.

 

“I’ll work at HQ a fair bit too,” Phil adds. “It’ll depend on -“

 

“On how much time they take up,” Clint finishes for him.

 

Phil nods, and begins doing up his tie.

 

“Besides, I’ll have to log hours on the range.”

 

“They really going to make _you_ retake your field cert?”

 

“Its procedure,” Phil smiles, and leans over to kiss Clint, short and sweet. “I was wondering, though, if you had given thought to taking up Stark’s offer of accommodation. It would help with the team-building. I believe Natasha is planning to move properly.”

 

Clint doesn’t look at Phil, because he’s not entirely sure what to say to this. He wants to go home with Phil, but he gets the impression Fury will probably order him to move here. He settles for a shrug.

 

Phil laces their fingers together. “I want to know where you stand.”

 

“Wanna stay with you,” Clint mutters.

 

Phil smiles, and squeezes his hand. “Like I’m not coming with you.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Idiot,” Phil punches him in the thigh with their linked fist, gently, and leans against Clint’s shoulder. “I’m with you.”

 

“Even if it means running into Stark in his pants?”

 

“Seen it.”

 

“I don’t want to know, do I?”

 

“He was trying to get me to stop watching him,” Phil replied. “You were in Bratislava. I considered calling you back to shoot him.”

 

“And forego the pleasure?” Clint smiled, and inhaled the smell of Phil’s shampoo, and the faint hint of laundry detergent from his shirt; Phil smelled like Agent Coulson again, and this was reassuring.

 

Phil huffs with laughter. “Come on. Can’t be late on my first day back. Sitwell has files for me.”

 

“Oh, goody. Your favourite.”

**/////**

 

 

Clint had never actually seen inside the flat Stark had given to him; he’d spent the first weeks in Natasha’s bed, or on her sofa – and after that, he’d slept in Phil’s hospital room, in a cot someone had brought in when they realised he wasn’t going anywhere. The apartment is much like Natasha’s was, all heavy fabric and smooth glossy surfaces, like an expensive hotel, devoid of personality but with the sort of taste that implies someone paid a lot of money for an interior designer to tell them how to spend more money on making it look utterly bland. The sofa is nice, however, and the bed is huge. Phil stalks around it, eyeing up the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up one wall of the living room, pacing out the size of the master bathroom (there is another bathroom attached to the guest room), and opening cupboards seemingly at random.

 

“It’s hideous,” Clint announces. “Red? Really?” He eyes the master bedroom wall with misgiving. One is red, the other two brilliant white, and the furniture is black. There are more windows, running along the length of one wall.

 

“Ms Potts is happy for residents to redecorate to their preferences,” JARVIS tells them. “Captain Rogers has gone for cream and green. Dr Banner has gone for white, but has hung a number of paintings.”

 

“We could bring our own furniture,” Phil adds. “There’s plenty of space. We’d need some more shelves though.”

 

“If you would like, I could create a holographic interface for your redesign,” JARVIS sounds almost hopeful. “I did tell Mr Stark that not everyone enjoys red as much as he does.”

 

Clint grins, because JARVIS sounds disapproving. He gets the impression that JARVIS doesn’t like red much either.

 

“Can we get purple curtains?” Clint quite likes the idea of redecorating. He’s never redecorated an entire flat before; the place he shared with Nat was a standard-issue SHIELD two-bed and furniture kit, so they’d mostly covered everything with pictures and throws, and then he moved in with Phil, and while the place is definitely theirs, most of the furniture had come from Phil’s old place.

 

“Purple?” Phil sounds unimpressed. “Really, Clint?”

 

“Yeah. Purple. For the bedroom – big velvet curtains. I’ve always wanted purple curtains.”

 

“Get that hologram out, please, JARVIS,” Phil sighs, shrugging out of his jacket. “Might as well do it properly.”

 

Clint grins, and sprawls on the sofa. The sofa smells of new leather, and it squeaks faintly; Clint glares at it, then pulls Phil into him, nuzzling at his neck. Phil bats him away, but his eyes are soft.

 

They spend several hours arguing over curtains, and where to put bookshelves, and whether or not it would be weird to hang a couple of Phil’s Captain America posters up (they settle on the guest room, and only two). Clint decides he has opinions about kitchens, and they agree that the shiny metal breakfast bar currently in situ suits neither of them, and they both prefer the small kitchen table they have now. JARVIS agrees that wooden doors would look better, and that Ms Potts has been most generous with the budget, and that settles it – they will have polished cherry instead of red and gold, warmth instead of metal, and somewhere Phil will be happy to cook in.

 

Clint gets his curtains.

 

Phil orders sushi, and they pick at the hologram further as they eat, jabbing at the coloured outline of their flat with chopsticks, Clint waving a bottle of beer to indicate where he’d like to put the bed in the spare room – Phil pointing out that it would be rude not to invite his sisters to stay, and Clint agrees, because Phil’s sisters are good people in his book, with their unerring ability to wind Phil up. They argue about carpets in the bedroom – or at least Clint argues, until Phil takes the beer from him and kisses him, slow and serious and hard, and Clint decides he is ok with throw rugs, really, as long as Phil kisses him like that.

 

Clint undoes Phil’s tie properly as they kiss, nipping at his throat, sucking on that spot by Phil’s ear that always makes him moan, and Phil is pushing Clint back into the sofa cushion as he toes off his socks (they’d both abandoned shoes when dinner arrived). Phil’s hand strays under Clint’s t-shirt, running his fingers across the muscles of his stomach, making Clint gasp and bite on Phil’s lip, wrapping his legs around Phil, pulling him closer, sliding one hand over the wool of Phil’s trousers, appreciating that nearly three months in hospital have not affected the shape of his arse one iota, and it is still one of Clint’s favourite things to hold. And squeeze. And maybe rub a little; he slides one hand under the fabric, and pats appreciatively. Phil frowns at him through their kiss, and yanks at Clint’s t-shirt.

 

“I thought you were supposed to be taking it easy,” Clint grins, and hauls his t-shirt off obligingly, and Phil falls on him, running his fingers over Clint’s nipples and tweaking.

 

“Firstly, no doctors walking in here,” Phil growls, and nips at his shoulder. “Secondly, I have been cleared for _mild_ exercise. Third, I want you.”

 

Clint obliges by pulling him up for a kiss, and undoing his belt. “Want me what?”

 

Phil shimmies his hips, and sheds his trousers and briefs in one swift move, and Clint pulls his shirt over his head, because fuck buttons right now, and he flips Phil underneath him, and places wet kisses on his chest as Phil pushes his thigh in between Clint’s legs and rubs at his erection.

 

“God, you’re beautiful,” Clint mutters, and Phil is, even if he’s a little skinnier than he should be for his broad frame, and his newest scar is still a harsh white and pink gash across his chest.

 

Phil blushes – he always blushes when Clint calls him beautiful in that voice – and fumbles with Clint’s trousers, pushing them down to run greedy hands over Clint’s arse and pull him so their cocks press against each other, and he groans, and Clint thinks how fucking lucky he is. Clint kisses him, and presses back against the older man, and nips at his throat, enjoying the five o’clock shadow on his neck.

 

“Want you inside me,” Phil gasps out. “Please. Clint.”

 

Clint feels his cock twitch at the hitch in Phil’s voice, and grinds against him. “God yes.”

 

“Fuck me,” Phil tells him, and rolls his hips obscenely, and clutches at him.

 

“You sure?”

 

“Yes. Lube in my bag,” Phil peppers this statement with hard kisses, and sucks on Clint’s earlobe, digging his fingers into Clint’s arse. Clint groans; he can smell pre-come and Phil and leather, and he really wants to bury himself in his lover right then and there. Instead, he rolls off Phil, and onto the floor, and crawls to the bag he’d carried up from the hospital bay that afternoon. There is indeed lube and an unopened box of condoms in amongst Phil’s pyjamas and his book and a clean t-shirt for Clint. He grins, and shuffles back to the sofa; Phil is working a spit-slicked finger inside himself, his cock bouncing stiffly on his stomach, and Clint thinks he is utterly gorgeous like this. He presses Phil’s legs further apart, and runs his tongue across Phil’s thigh, and over the crease where his arse meets his thigh, nosing at Phil’s balls, making Phil groan and his own cock twitch. He tongues at Phil around his finger, before pushing in his own lubed-up finger beside Phil’s.

 

“Yes,” Phil groans, and thrusts against Clint’s finger, and he is tight but willing, and it is not long before Clint adds another finger as he kisses along the length of Phil’s cock, which bobs against his lips. Clint laughs, and looks up at Phil, who is watching him with hooded eyes, lust and need and love written across his face.

 

“Fuck, Clint,” he groans, as Clint’s massaging fingers press against his prostate, and he clenches at his shoulders, grinding himself down on Clint’s hand. “Yes, so good.”

 

Clint groans into Phil’s cock, and tears open the condom packet with his teeth, the smell of latex assaulting his nose, but he ignores it, slides the condom over his aching cock, and lubes himself up, working more lube inside Phil with his fingers, and Phil moans as he slides out of him, and kneels on the sofa; Phil wraps his legs around Clint with a huff of laughter and a wide smile, wriggling to pull him closer. Clint holds himself steady, and presses into Phil, groaning with the effort of not thrusting too fast too quickly, digging his fingers into Phil’s hips; he groans out Phil’s name, as though sound is being wrung from him. Phil is tight and slick around him, heat and muscle, and Clint presses in slowly until he is buried completely inside him, feeling his balls press against Phil’s arse, and Phil is reaching for him, pulling him closer, kissing him messily, tongues clashing and dragging.

 

He moves slowly, and echoes each thrust with his fist around Phil’s cock. Clint doesn’t want to go hard, he wants to enjoy this, not to hurt Phil by pushing his body too far, knowing neither of them will last long, because he hasn’t been inside Phil for months. Despite his lover’s restraint, Phil fucks back against him, encouraging, and mumbles a litany of swear words and Clint’s name, his voice low and shaky, the voice Clint loves, keeps to himself, the voice that never fails to go straight to his heart and his cock at once.

 

“Oh god, so good, missed you inside me, Clint, fuck, yes, Clint, yes, harder, please Clint fuck yes so right missed you so much fuck fuck fuck me yes, Clint, god,” Phil babbles, and Clint loves to hear him come undone like this, words all jumbled up and messy where Phil is normally so precise, so ordered. 

 

Clint is telling Phil things too, how good he feels, how much he loves him, how tight he is around Clint’s cock, and he thrusts harder, barely able to hold himself back, kissing him messily in time with his thrusts.

 

“Clint, fuck, gonna come, don’t stop, fuck,” Phil cries out, and Clint murmurs reassurance and continues pumping his fist over Phil’s cock until he comes over them both, hot and smelling of salt and Phil; he cries out Clint’s name as he comes, loud and breathless and Clint groans, Phil tightens around him, and he follows with his own orgasm, Phil’s name becoming a wordless shout, collapsing on Phil’s chest, moaning softly as Phil kisses him, holding him close with legs and arms and his love.

 

“Fuck,” Phil breathes, and runs his hands up and down Clint’s back in a soothing motion. “What did I do to deserve you?”

 

“What did _I_ do?” Clint replies, except it comes out as _waahdiEYEdoo_ because he appears to have lost his words with his orgasm. “Love you” ( _luvoo_ ).

 

Phil laughs, and shifts so that Clint slides out of him – Phil huffs a little at the loss, and the weight lifting off his still-healing ribcage – and holds him tighter, kissing the side of his face where Clint is buried in his neck. “You’re so good to me,” Phil murmurs, and tightens his hold around Clint. “So good. I love you so much.”

 

Eventually, too quickly, Clint wakes up enough to roll off Phil completely, and he checks him over – Phil assures him that he’s not about to spontaneously combust – and he knots off the condom and tosses it neatly into a wastepaper bin in the corner (gold-coloured, of course). They are both sweaty and sticky, and Phil’s come is drying on both their chests, so he pulls Phil to his feet and they totter into the bathroom, and the shower has a smooth wooden bench in it, so they sit under the water and the steam, and hold each other.

 

“We should have sex in all the other rooms before we decide to move in,” Phil says. “Just to check.”

 

“Wouldn’t want it to not be compatible,” Clint grins, and reaches for the shampoo. “Sure I can’t persuade you to paint the walls purple?”

 

“Only if I get the Captain America duvet cover,” Phil retorts.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sky Larkin's Antibodies


End file.
